CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu State Marketing Corporation (Tasmac) has decided to expand its bottle buy-back scheme to more districts from December 29. The scheme will be extended to Chennai, Tiruvallur, Sivaganga, Tirunelveli and a few other districts. With this, Tasmac aims to cover the entire state by the end of the year.
The bottle buy-back scheme, introduced to encourage the return of empty liquor bottles at retail outlets for a small refund, is already in operation in 21 districts.
However, Tasmac employees have raised the lack of safety gear and additional burden for workers. K Thiruselvan, general secretary of the CITU-affiliated Tasmac workers’ state federation, said, “We are not against the bottle buy-back scheme.
But neither the government nor Tasmac has considered employee safety.” He added that the unions have demanded the appointment of additional staff exclusively to handle empty bottles in all the 4,800 retail outlets across the state and also sought safety measures such as hand gloves, proper storage space for bottles and basic protective equipment.
Thiruselvan said representatives of all employee associations recently met Prohibition and Excise Minister S Muthusamy at the secretariat and explained the ground realities. “The minister accepted that these issues are genuine. However, the meeting ended without any final decision being made,” he said.
“The Joint Action Committee, comprising eight employee associations, will meet on Friday to decide the next course of action,” he added.
T Dhanasekaran, general secretary of the AITUC-affiliated Tasmac employees’ association, warned that if the demands are not accepted before Pongal, employees would resume their wait-in protest.
Responding to the concerns, a senior Tasmac official told TNIE that the corporation had provided a health fund of Rs 22 crore to employees last year. “We are also planning to implement the union government’s employees’ state insurance (ESI) scheme for Tasmac staff. We have sought opinions from all associations, and the state government will take a decision after receiving them,” the official said.