CHENNAI: For the third time in recent months, the Chennai corporation’s sanitary workers had called for a strike and later withdrawn it. The main contention was the civic body’s plans to privatise waste
management in most parts of the city. The strike was withdrawn last week after the civic body postponed the move for now, but has surely not given up the idea.
For the bureaucrats, and most of the civic society, the arguments are mostly about the presumed efficiency private players would bring in and how it might help making the city look cleaner. But what is often left out of the discourse are the concerns of the end worker who ultimately clears the garbage off the city’s streets.
A glimpse into lives of two sanitary workers in the city — one of them, corporation’s permanent worker and another a contract worker — shows how different the quality of lives of the workers are, simply by virtue of the nature of their employment. They both do typically the same work every day. And the taxpayers’ money spent towards the sanitation of the city would also remain same, even if it is completely privatised.
But the status of worker — either as permanent or contract — sets their lives totally apart. Radhika, a sanitary worker on contract, is not even willing to go by her original name, mostly because she heard
another contract worker was asked to stay off work for giving an interview to a news channel. Radhika wants to make sure she does not lose her job, even with all the problems her status as a contract
worker brings with it.
Chinnamma is also a sanitary worker, but is a permanent worker of the Chennai Corporation. Just like Radhika, she is also the sole breadwinner of her family. Both are now in knee-deep in debt. Their
similarities end there.
Forty-eight-year-old Radhika may receive a maximum salary of Rs 11,222 under the National Urban Livelihood Mission scheme — that is, if she goes to work 31 days a month. The workers are paid Rs 362 a day.
“We have to take two days off a month, for which the daily wage is deducted. So, we never get the full amount. Besides, these two days should be taken whenever they tell us and not when we need it,” she said.
Last month she lost control of the tricycle she was riding after collecting garbage and fell off it. She stayed away from work for three days, having injured her left arm in the fall for which her monthly pay was duly reduced.
“But, I’ve seen worse. In 2011, I was bitten by a snake when collecting garbage. I was scared to go back to work for a few days,” she said, showing proof of treatment. For this, she was handed over Rs 1,000 by her direct supervisor, the sanitary inspector. “I got the money after treatment was over. I handed over the entire amount to my colleagues who took me to the hospital in an auto and stayed with me throughout.”
Radhika is the sole breadwinner of her family. She pays a rent of Rs 4,000 for a single bedroom house in Manali and is in a debt of Rs 2 lakh after getting her only daughter married. The moneylender
promptly sends his man to her house on the 4th of every month to collect the interest. Her salary, on the other hand, is not as unhesitating.
“Sometimes, it comes on the 9th, sometimes on the 5th, sometimes on the 20th.” Her daughter had dropped out of school before her 10th exams because she ‘did not show interest’ in studies.
However, says Radhika, she would have had to get her married after twelfth anyway, because funding her undergraduation seemed impossible. “Sometimes, she comes to work with me. I tell her firmly to look for other work. This is not for her.”
Radhika’s shift begins at 6am and ends at around 2pm. During cyclone Vardah, she remembers working until 11pm, doing extra work like distributing food. As constant as her work was the fear of losing it. “We have to always be careful. We are contract workers.”
Corporation authorities have made it plainly clear that once the eight zones are privatised, in which Manali, where Radhika works, is included, the staff are left to their own devices to find work
with the private sanitary operators.
There are 7190 sanitary workers in the Swarna Jayanthi scheme that does not guarantee tenure permanence and other contract-based schemes, many of whom have nursed hopes of one day becoming a permanent staff.
This is especially the case with the 482 workers on the Corporation’s Non Muster Rolls (NMR), many of whom have served over two decades, waiting patiently to be made permanent. With the privatisation
now, the day may never come. Fifty-three-year-old Chinnamma considers herself ‘lucky’ to have been a permanent staff since the time she started work 35 years ago.
She was 17 when her husband passed away, passing on this job to her on compassionate grounds.
Sanitary work, in various forms, had been taken up by many members of her family. But, it ends with her. Her son works at a private establishment after a diploma in civil engineering.
She now earns around Rs 24,000 a month. She has a debt of Rs 4 lakhs, but unlike Radhika, she had the courage to punch above her weight, thanks to the salary that is credited on the first of every month.
The money from the loan went into acquiring a small piece of land, instead. She is entitled to 12 days of casual leave and 15 days of medical leave a year.
The sanitary staff on contract and non muster rolls now and those to join them from now on stand to lose more than their work due to private waste operations; they may not get an opportunity to a
fuller, more fulfilling life- the opportunity that some permanent workers like Chinamma were lucky to get.
This is not to say that the permanent staff will get away unscathed. According to P Srinivasan of the Red Flag Union, if the eight zones are privatised, permanent workers would have to be accommodated in the four zones that remain with the Corporation.
“In that case, there will be 1800 permanent workers in excess for these four zones. What are they going to do with them- put them on parks, malaria or toilet duty? Or simply pay them every month? We have no clear answers,” he said.
Maintenance of toilets are also to be privatised with tenders for the same already being floated. When contacted, a senior Corporation official said that all the steps would be taken to protect the interests of
workers.
“We have held several rounds of meetings with the workers and promised that we will do everything we can right from minimum wage guarantee,” the official said. “But, the workers will have to approach the firms. They will definitely be absorbed. It’s not like the firm will import staff from other cities,” he added.
The official said that the focus of privatisation would be quality oriented delivery. “There will be stringent penalty clauses in the agreement where the agencies will be held accountable for all their
actions,” he said.
One of the conditions for the private contractors is the payment of wages as per the Minimum Wages Act. But the era of permanent government employment for the sanitary workers, and the quality of life it brings with it, is set to come to an end if the corporation goes ahead with it plans for privatisation.
The men and women who clean our streets may have to settle for a life of uncertainty like that of Radhika’s. We will see less and less of workers like Chinnamma, who managed to fight back in life despite losing her husband at a young age.