The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Caught in a web of exploitation

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Wednesday, Aug 06, 2008
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Caught in a web of exploitation

Divya Gandhi

Most of the city’s
15,000 pourakarmikas
are Dalit women

— Photo: K Gopinathan

No respite: About 15,000 pourakarmikas like Jayamma work seven days a week in Bangalore.

Bangalore: The day begins early for S. Jayamma. By 6 a.m. she is out of her house, broom and tray in hand, to Nandini Layout where she is employed as a pourakarmika to sweep the streets, clean the drains and sort household garbage.

Behind the city’s gleaming façade is an invisible community of around 15,000 pourakarmikas like Jayamma — 80 per cent of who are Dalit women — who work seven days a week. However, the majority of them (10,903) are not employed permanently by the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), but by contractors, who, according to rights activists, run nothing short of an exploitative “mafia,” denying workers their basic rights and safe working conditions and remain unaccountable to the principal employer, the BBMP.

“Contract pourakarmikas get paid only between Rs. 1,500 and Rs. 1,900 a month, which is a third of what a permanent employee of the BBMP doing the same work gets,” said Clifton D. Rozario of Alternative Law Forum, a lawyers collective. This is a violation of both the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Rules and conditions under which the licence is granted to the contractors. They state that contract employees are entitled to the same wages and working conditions as permanent employees of the principal employer (in this case BBMP), he said.

Ms. Jayamma has worked 14 years as a pourakarmika, earning Rs. 1,900 a month with no more than half a day off a week, collecting and segregating garbage without as much as a pair of gloves to protect her. She became the sole earner in her family of four ever since her husband fell ill recently, she told The Hindu. But her own medical bills have been mounting.

“I do not have very much time to talk,” she says apologetically as she seats herself down. She is between two shifts, she explains: once she has put in her hours cleaning the streets, she heads to a factory to supplement her income. She also has to visit the local clinic before it closes, Ms. Jayamma says matter-of-factly.

Often, ESI cards given by contractors do not bear any seal or signature and are therefore of no use, says Mr. Rozario.

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