Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore   

Conservancy workers regularised

Special Correspondent

Over 750 of them to get orders on February 19

COIMBATORE: The State Government has issued orders to make permanent 766 temporary conservancy workers of the Coimbatore Corporation. The civic body said that orders for regularising the workers were already received.

The workers would be given the orders at a grand function to be organised by the Corporation on February 19.

The Corporation had been going through a period of suspense over the regularisation of the workers, in the run up to the implementation of a solid waste management project under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission.

The waste management project would be implemented at Rs. 96 crore and this involved door-to-door collection of garbage. Faced with the need for more conservancy workers, the Corporation had contemplated privatisation of garbage collection and disposal. But it ran into resistance from certain sections of councillors on the grounds that a garbage collection fee levied by private operators would burden the people. They wanted the civic body to increase the number of conservancy workers and procure more equipment, bins and vehicles to remove garbage.

Over the last three months, the Corporation had been facing immense pressure from the councillors on regularising the temporary workers. A little over 400 workers had been regularised more than a month ago. Though the Corporation announced this then, orders were not issued to the workers. This led to councillors asking the officials in the Council why the orders were held back. They were told that the Corporation was working hard to get the others also regularised and that orders could be issued to all the 766 workers.

Sources in the Corporation also said that a section of the councillors insisted on the regularisation of these workers before taking up the waste management scheme for implementation. The Corporation actually had 861 vacancies in the conservancy wing. It had a sanctioned strength of 2,916 workers. This included 459 workers the Government had allowed the Corporation to employ on a consolidated pay of Rs. 1,000 a month. The Government had said in an order in 1997 that these workers' wages could be increased by 10 per cent every three years.

But the Corporation already had 402 vacancies against the sanctioned strength of 2,457 workers. It could not fill these vacancies and appoint the 459 also on consolidated pay owing to a ban on recruitment. Now, the order issued allowed the Corporation to fill all the 861 vacancies.

Mayor R. Venkatachalam said the Corporation, however, had only 766 temporary workers to fill up the vacancies. The remaining 95 could be filled on compassionate grounds by providing jobs to the children of the workers who died while in service.

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