CHENNAI: A 36-year-old part-time sanitation worker at a government high school in Erode cleans around 20 rooms, including laboratories and teachers’ rooms, besides the school ground daily. She also cleans the toilets twice a day. For this, she is paid Rs 3,400 a month, which is a nearly 50% increase from the Rs 2,250 that was paid monthly during the last academic year. She, however, is yet to receive the wages since the start of the current academic year.
“I have been working in the school for 13 years now in the hope that the wages would increase. I have three kids and my husband is a daily wage worker. We are not able to live with our earnings,” she says.
Her situation resonates with the over 32,000 part-time sanitation workers employed in rural government schools across the state. Since 2015, local bodies have been entrusted with maintaining toilets in government schools within their respective jurisdiction.
A government order (GO) issued by the rural development department on August 10 sanctioned Rs 86.94 crore towards sanitation work in rural government schools for June 2026-April 2027, covering 32,908 such sanitary workers.
The allocation includes Rs 42.90 crore for 21,668 panchayat union primary schools and Rs 18.80 crore for 6,106 panchayat union middle schools. Government high schools have been allocated Rs 11.67 crore and higher secondary schools, Rs 12.38 crore.
The allocation includes the money for buying cleaning materials. Despite it being higher than last year’s allocation of about Rs 67 crore, workers and headmasters maintain that the funds provided are inadequate.
Following their wage revision in March this year, workers in primary schools receive Rs 1,500 per month. The revised payment for workers in government high schools and higher secondary schools is Rs 3,400 and Rs 4,500–up from Rs 2,250 and Rs 3,000 respectively.
Headmasters had taken up the “meagre” allocation with Minister for School Education A Rajmohan during a recent meeting. “We are not able to find sanitation workers for such low wages. Either we have to pay an additional amount by digging into our pockets or sadly accept the plight of the workers,” said a headmaster.
Education activist Sudar Natraj urged the government to consider the number of toilets in each school and allocate sufficient funds to compensate the sanitation workers adequately.
