The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : PMK leaders, 680 contract labourers rounded up

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Wednesday, Apr 09, 2008
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

PMK leaders, 680 contract labourers rounded up

A.V. Ragunathan

Power generation was maintained at 1600-MW
Absenteeism was felt only in Thermal Power Station-II

NEYVELI: Pattali Makkal Katchi leaders, along with 680 contract labourers, were rounded up by police for defying the ban on agitations on the Neyveli Lignite Corporation premises here on Tuesday.

The PMK leaders, including MPs A.K. Moorthi, E. Ponnuswami and K.Dhanraj, T. Velmurugan, MLA, and R. Govindaswamy, former MLA, had planned to besiege the NLC corporate office but they were stopped at the Nehru statue at Block-8 in the Neyveli township and taken into preventive custody. Earlier, the district administration had issued a warning that any disruption to industrial peace would be severely dealt with.

Mr. Moorthi, State president of the Pattali Thozhir Sangham, told The Hindu that the contract labourers were not happy with the way their nine-day-old strike was dropped without the management conceding any of the nine-point charter of demands. Having lost faith in the Jeeva Contract Labourers’ Union (affiliated to the All India Trade Union Congress and that spearheaded the strike) they sought the intervention of the PMK and accordingly with the consent of PMK founder S. Ramadoss they launched the agitation, he said.

As for the assurance given by Electricity Minister Arcot N.Veeraswami to end the stalemate within a week, Mr. Ponnuswami said with the change of the Coal Minister (Santosh Bagrodia has replaced Dasari Narayana Rao as Union Minister of State for Coal) a fresh round of talks ought to be held.

The party reiterated the demands of regularisation of contract labourers, payment of 8.33 per cent bonus, equal pay for equal work and free treatment in the NLC hospital.

The NLC sources said 80 per cent of 13,000 contract labourers turned up on Tuesday and the absenteeism was felt only in Thermal Power Station-II. During the strike period, the power generation was maintained at 1600-MW (full capacity 2490 MW) and on Tuesday it stood at 2000-MW.

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