Citizens Committee of Tiruppur District and Forum for Protection of Adolescent and Women Workers on Tuesday placed a list of demands on behalf of the workers from garment units in and around Tiruppur to the various political parties and their candidates ahead of the Assembly election.
The primary demands concerning the labour rights of the garment workers included ensuring ‘overtime wages’ whenever a worker is made to work for more than eight hours a day, a monthly minimum living wage of ₹21,000, providing dearness allowance to all the workers, ensuring Employees Provident Fund (EPF) and Employee State Insurance Coverage (ESI) for all garment workers and abolishing illegal contract labour system by regularising all labourers, who have worked for 480 days in two years.
Other demands included provision of identity cards to all workers, ensuring wages on government holidays, banning garment units from hiring adolescents in the age group of 15 to 18 years, maintenance of a register for migrant workers, ensuring basic facilities such as toilets to women in garment units, setting up a committee for prevention of sexual harassment and ensuring crèches for the children of the women workers at all the companies, a press release said.
A team from these forums will present these demands to all the candidates contesting in five Assembly constituencies namely Tiruppur South, Tiruppur North, Avinashi, Sulur and Palladam, according to the release.
