With the government agreeing to consider and fulfil all the demands of the municipal contract workers across the State, the Joint Action Committee of workers unions called off the indefinite strike on Tuesday, the thirteenth day of protest.
The Joint Action Committee, including representatives of several workers unions, held a press conference here announcing their decision to call off the strike.
JAC convener K. Umamaheswara Rao said that the government agreed to maintain status quo on the implementation of G.O. 279 that makes urban local bodies (ULBs) hire sanitation maintenance work instead of employing contract workers, mostly from self-help groups (SHGs).
At present, only 52 of the total 110 ULBs in the State are implementing the new system and the government will soon form State and district-level committees, including officials and JAC members, to study the implementation.
The rest of the ULBs will wait for the report that will be drafted after three months. The government will take a decision on whether to expand the system or revoke it following the report.
Mr. Rao said that government agreed to provide job security to workers by making municipal commissioners as their principal employers in the new system and workers will no longer need to report to the contractors and resume reporting to the sanitary inspector.
Incentives
Also, the officials assured that workers will be paid ₹1,000 from September 2018 in the form of incentive in addition to the existing salary of ₹11,000 following a recent order and a decision of increasing the pay to₹ 16,300 will be finalised by the government at the next but one cabinet meeting, he said. Meanwhile, the government will pursue the Supreme Court order to increase the salary to₹ 18,000, he said.
According to JAC members, the government also agreed to extend General Provident Fund to contract workers, hike in salaries of tricycle pullers and toilet maintainers to ₹12,000, allotment of houses to the needy among sanitation workers on a priority basis and others.
The JAC presented their demands before the officials of the Municipal Administration Department on Monday and made it clear that they would continue to strike until the demands are addressed.
CM’s order
Following the orders of Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, the officials agreed to implement the demands of the workers.
Earlier in the day, municipal workers led by JAC staged protests and took out a rally from Lenin Centre. Police foiled their bid to lay siege to the Chief Minister’s camp office and detained them.
