Osmanabad: The housekeeping staff in the temple of the presiding deity of the state, Tuljabhavani, went on a strike on Tuesday. The striking employees include 220 men and 42 women. These staffers are contract workers, hired by Krystal Integrated Services Private Limited, a Mumbai hospitality company. Prasad Lad, member of legislative council (MLC) of the Bharatiya Janata Party, is the owner of this company. Lad was unaware of the strike until contacted by The Free Press Journal. He claimed the employees protested for an hour before calling off the strike.
Lad said, “Some staffers wanted a salary hike. They protested for an hour. Later they met the district collector, who is also president of the mandir samiti (temple committee appointed by the state government).” Lad added, “Pay raises come under the jurisdiction of the district collector. We are just facilitators. It is the government which transfers the salary amount in the account of the manpower company, which we then pay to the employees.”.
Every worker receives a salary of Rs 6,000 a month, and the workers haven’t been paid their salaries for the last two months. Apart from non-payment of salary, a worker said, “We have no information on the amount of provident fund deducted from our salaries, as the company does not share this information.” He further said, the workers are not even given a weekly holiday. Moreover, there are discrepancies in the Memorandum of Understanding between the Tuljabhavani temple authorities and Krystal and that between Krystal and the temple staffers, according to the staffers.