CHENNAI: In a midnight crackdown, police evicted hundreds of sanitation workers who have been protesting against privatisation of solid waste management operations in zones 5 and 6 of the Greater Chennai Corporation at Ripon building on Wednesday.
The move to evict and detain the protesting workers began soon after the Madras High Court earlier in the day, permitted the government to remove them from the protest site.
As of 1 am on Thursday, the workers were being taken away by around 40 buses, that had been kept ready, police sources told TNIE.
They would be detained temporarily at community halls across the city but were not being arrested at the moment, the sources added. During police action, sources said some woman workers had fainted while some sustained injuries. Those injured would be taken to the hospital for treatment, sources added.
K Suresh, state secretary of the LTUC, told TNIE the detained protesters were being taken to various locations, including Guindy and Velachery. K Bharathi, president of the Uzhaippor Urimai Iyakkam, was also among those forcefully detained.
Workers TNIE spoke to added that protesters taken to Velachery and Mount Road continued their agitation there on the roadside. Meanwhile, police personnel remained stationed outside the Ripon Building to prevent any further gatherings while GCC deployed sanitation staff to clean the protest site.
From Wednesday afternoon, hundreds of police personnel and several buses had been stationed at the site while talks were held with workers to shift their protest to one of the sites designated for public protests, including Rajarathinam Stadium in Egmore.
However, union representatives and workers refused to leave the site after another round of talks with GCC officials failed.
Author and activist Shalin Maria Lawrence said that there were around 3,000 people, of whom 2,000 were sanitation workers at the time of their detention; 90 percent of them were women with kids and elderly women, most being Dalits. With the food trucks being blocked since Tuesday afternoon, most of them were hungry. The restrooms were also closed making it difficult for the women workers to answer nature's call. Despite all these difficulties and the police using force against them, the workers are firm on continuing with their protest.
She noted that when the eviction was happening at Ripon building, Chief Minister MK Stalin was watching the preview of the latest Rajinikanth movie 'Coolie,' which hit the screens on Thursday.
"I've never seen such an insensitive CM in Tamil Nadu," she added and pointed out that the legal struggle of the workers will continue till they get justice.
Protesters refused to shift even after talks with the ministers, mayor and corporation
The protesters, most of them women, have over a decade of service as contract workers with the GCC and demand regularisation of their jobs as well as an assurance that their salaries will not be cut.
The stand-off persisted even after a final round of talks with Ministers K N Nehru, P K Sekarbabu, Mayor R Priya, GCC Commissioner J Kumaragurubaran in the evening. On Wednesday morning, union representatives had written to CM M K Stalin, urging him take action.
The government had held seven rounds of negotiation talks with the workers’ representatives till Sunday, after which it stopped. Since the fifth round of talks, ministers and officials have been urging the staff to shift to Rajarathinam Stadium, citing disruption to traffic, but the protesters refused.
(With inputs from Online Desk & Gautham Selvarajan @ Chennai)