A section of police personnel on bandobust duty for freedom fighter Muthuramalinga Thevar guru puja in Madurai staged a silent protest by ignoring food packets supplied to them to show their dissent against “poor pay structure recommended in the Seventh Pay Commission.”
While it was on a large scale among police personnel of Tamil Nadu Special Police, who were deployed from different districts, a section of the Armed Reserve police also joined them in the afternoon.
When they were served in the morning, the young TSP constables who received the food packets later distributed them to the crowd who had come to pay their homage to the life-size statue of the freedom fighter at Goripalayam.
“It is for the first time senior officials came to us to check whether we had food,” said a TSP constable. They wanted to give their report to their higher-ups in Chennai, he said.
“Though at least 50% of us did not have breakfast, we told them we had food to avoid disciplinary action,” he added. The TSP personnel complained that the meagre pay was disproportionate to the heavy workload. “Employees with similar educational qualification (10th class) get more salary, holidays on Sundays and second and fourth Saturdays. They work only for the stipulated eight hours,” a constable said.
The policemen had to work all seven days and they were not paid double wages on those days like the employees of other government departments. “Instead of one day salary, we are paid a paltry ₹200 as extra time remuneration for each day. And this is denied to those who take leave on any other day.
A constable complained that on Monday, the TSP constables had to get up at 3 a.m. after going to bed at 11.30 p.m. the previous night. “We came here before the Chief Minister arrived. We can take rest only around 11 p.m. The officials complain about lack of enough police strength and make us toil for long hours. But the fact is many police personnel are engaged as orderlies in various senior police officer’s houses, - even at the residences of retired police officers. They take care of cooking, gardening and other daily chores,” he charged.
The constables said that the idea of protest by fasting was circulated through WhatsApp a couple of days back. “Only those who could not withstand hunger as we had to stand long hours for bandobust duty took food,” another constable said. A police source said that more police personnel joined the protest by skipping lunch.
