A number of workers belonging to Madurai Corporation Workers Association (MCWA), which is affiliated to Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), staged a sit-in protest inside Madurai Corporation premises on Thursday to highlight their various long-pending demands, including regularisation of employment and salaries.
M. Balasubramanian, general secretary, MCWA, said that the demands that they wanted immediately fulfilled were increasing the Deepavali bonus payment to workers from ₹ 5,000 to ₹ 10,000 and disbursal of salaries for contract employees associated with engineering department directly to their bank accounts instead of cash payment.
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“There were several other important demands. However, we highlighted these two demands in particular during our protest since they can be easily addressed by the Corporation Commissioner,” he said.
He added that though Corporation Commissioner S. Aneesh Sekhar met them on Thursday and assured to look into these two demands at the earliest, he refused to give a written assurance that the demands would be met. “Similar promises were made by many officials in the past for the same demands, but were never met. Hence, we have planned to stage more protests in the coming days,” he said.
Their otherdemands included bringing of conservancy workers from newly-annexed areas into regular time-scale pay, implementing Seventh Pay Commission recommendations for permanent conservancy workers, implementing two judgments of Madras High Court related to regularisation of daily-wagers and workers engaged on consolidated pay in Madurai Corporation and filling up of vacancies.
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