MUMBAI: Maharashtra Minister Nitin Raut has written to Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray seeking his intervention to address the issue of women sugarcane workers removing their uterus to ensure that they don’t lose wages.
According to Raut, the Marathwada region in central Maharashtra has the highest number of sugarcane workers, a substantial number of them women. “A large of women labourers don’t work during their menstrual cycle and don’t get wages for the days they are absent and hence, they opt for removal of their uterus,” he noted in a letter written on Tuesday.
The minister, a Congress leader, pegged the number of women who took such step at 30,000. Raut said women will not take such steps if sugarcane factories provide them wages for the four days of menstrual cycle during the six-month-long sugarcane harvesting season. “Requesting you to issue orders to the department concerned to solve the problems faced by women sugarcane workers in Marathwada on humanitarian ground,” Raut said in the letter.
Raut handles a slew of portfolios, including PWD, tribal welfare, women and child welfare, textile, relief and rehabilitation. Thackeray is heading a Shiv Sena-led government in which Congress and NCP are key partners.