Start working with private contractors, or else: Chennai Corporation warns NULM workers
Talks hit a deadlock as the Corporation issues ultimatum to protesting workers, and tells them to vacate the site outside Ripon Building. DT Next reports;
Cleanliness workers from the National Urban Livelihood Mission sitting in protest for the last 10 days outside Ripon Building
CHENNAI: Negotiations between the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) and protesting cleanliness workers reached an impasse on Sunday after the civic body issued an ultimatum asking them to vacate the protest site outside Ripon Building to continue talks, a condition the workers flatly rejected.
The ultimatum came during the seventh round of discussions in the afternoon, attended by Mayor R Priya, Commissioner J Kumaragurubaran, senior corporation officials, and trade union representatives.
K Bharathi, state president of the Uzhaipor Urimai Iyakkam (UUI), accused the Corporation of refusing to budge from its stand that the workers must join a private contractor. “They also want us to stop protesting outside Ripon Building. We’ll continue our protest even if the police threaten arrest us,” he said.
Bharathi stressed that most of the workers, many of them women from marginalised communities, had served the city during the pandemic, monsoons, and floods. “A Corporation job is their last hope for permanency,” he said, and questioned GCC’s claim that the protest was causing public inconvenience. “If we were truly blocking the public, why wait until the seventh day to issue a notice?”
Deputy Mayor Magesh Kumaar told DT Next that he had requested the Commissioner to explore legal ways to transfer the National Urban Livelihood Mission (NULM) workers to other Corporation departments.
The workers began their agitation on August 1 after the GCC directed NULM staff in Royapuram and Thiru Vi Ka Nagar zones to shift to a private contractor. They feared the move would slash their monthly pay to Rs 16,000 after PF and ESI deductions and derail their long-pending demand for regularisation.
The GCC has defended the privatisation of solid waste management, claiming that it would improve service quality while protecting employee welfare. Since 2020, around 10 of the city’s 15 zones and three wards in Ambattur have been privatised. Royapuram and Thiru Vi Ka Nagar were handed over to Ramky Enviro Engineers on July 21.
Out of 3,809 sanitation posts under the contractor, 1,770 are filled, while the remaining 2,039 are allotted to temporary workers from self-help groups, 975 in Royapuram and 1,059 in Thiru Vi Ka Nagar.