CHENNAI: The Greater Chennai Corporation has 33 pending vacancies for posts reserved for members of the SC/ST community, officials told the National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC) on Monday.
From the year 2013-2014 until now, 33 reserved vacancies- including posts of assistant engineers, typists and road workers were yet to be filled.
L Murugan, Vice chairman of NCSC heard petitions by corporation employees belonging to the SC/ST community at the Ripon building when the issue of pending vacancies was discussed. Corporation officials from all departments were present at the meeting.
The commission has asked the corporation to consider a special drive to fill up backlog vacancies and sort out the issue within a period of two months.
Murugan also asked the corporation commissioner to form zone level grievance cells in all the 15 zones of the corporation to address grievances of dalit staff in the respective zones. The Commissioner G Prakash responded that steps to have a committee in place would be initiated within a period of 10 days.
Most of the grievances heard by the Commission on Monday pertained to issues faced by temporary and permanent sanitary workers under the city corporation ranging from lack of access to toilets and changing rooms to pending wages.
A section of temporary sanitary workers complained that they were made to buy brooms from their own pockets. “They ask us to buy brooms and we are not reimbursed for it- it costs around Rs 60 and we have to buy four or five brooms a year,” said Anitha (name changed), a sanitary worker from the Thiru Vi Ka Nagar zone.
A Malaria worker from the Perungudi Zone said that he was sacked from work for taking a short period of leave because he was down with a fever. Corporation officials present at the meeting said that the issues would be looked into.