The struggle of sanitation workers in Karnataka, commonly referred to as pourakarmikas, continues as the state government has not regularised all the workers, as promised earlier. The workers had gone on a state-wide indefinite protest earlier this year in July demanding regularisation of their jobs with a minimum monthly salary of Rs 30,000. They currently earn wages ranging from Rs 12,000 to Rs 17,000. Their regularisation would make them eligible for benefits such as pension, which are not given to contract workers.
With continued denial of their basic rights, the pourakarmikas had said they could not continue to work under inhumane conditions. The strike was called off after four days on July 4, following Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai’s assurance in writing that their demands would be met. The government had asked for three months to complete the regularisation process.
The state government had agreed on regularising pourakarmikas and all other contractual workers such as the drivers and helpers after forming a committee. The committee was formed on July 15 with members from Safai Karmachari Nigama, Social Welfare Department officials along with Law Department officials to frame guidelines for special recruitment rules. The committee also included Clifton D’Rozario, National Secretary of All India Central Council of Trade Unions (AICCTU).
The committee prepared a detailed list of recommendations based on the 1976 IPD Salappa report to be submitted to the government on regularisation of pourakarmikas including benefits for housing, education and maternity among others. “Even before we could submit these recommendations, it was reported in the media that around 11,000 pourakarmikas in the state would be regularised,” said Maitreyi Krishnan, a state committee member of AICCTU.
According to AICCTU, there are more than 27,000 pourakarmikas in the state. On September 26, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) Recruitment of Pourakarmikas (Special) Rules 2022, were published by the BBMP. The draft guidelines specified a 55-year-old upper age restriction for pourakarmika appointments to the BBMP. The wage range for the position was set at Rs 17,000 to Rs 28,950, and qualifications for the position included fluency in Kannada and a medical fitness report to be issued from a qualified authority. However, it said that there were vacancies only for 3,673 pourakarmikas at present. This draft too, was made without taking into consideration the report already made by the Pourakarmika committee.
The government and BBMP were slammed by AICCTU, who then wrote letters to CM Bommai and Additional Chief Secretary, Department of Urban Development. The AICCTU said that despite the written assurance of the CM to regularise all sanitation workers, the government had only decided on a few. They demanded that they should compulsorily regularise all pourakarmikas, including drivers and helpers at once. They also demanded that the contract system be abolished and all recommendations made by the pourakarmika committee be implemented immediately.
A TNIE report quoted a Minister saying that financial compulsions had forced them to regularise workers in a staggered manner and the remaining 12,800 would be regularised at a later date. The fight for humane working conditions by the pourakarmikas has been a long one. When the pandemic hit, sanitation workers were among the many frontline workers who kept the cities clean. Even during the pandemic, they had to resort to protests to be provided with COVID-19 protective gear. With meagre salaries and increasing living costs, the pourakarmikas say their future seems bleak.
Panjalamma, a pourakarmika who has been working for more than 20 years, has been coming to work every day, even though she has lost vision in one eye. “I earn a salary of Rs 15,000 monthly, a majority of which is spent in paying rent. We work for the government even when we are sick, yet they are of no use to us. They cannot even fulfil the simple demand of making us permanent. How are we to survive, when we physically can no longer work?’ she asked.