Action taken against sanitation workers of Thiruvananthapuram corporation kicks up a row

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Mounting protest against the disciplinary action against sanitation workers has put the CPM on the backfoot. Party state secretary M V Govindan on Friday said that it was not CPM’s policy to terminate any protestors from service. But party’s district secretary Anavoor Nagappan termed the incident as an imprudence on the part of the employees.

“It is not the CPM’s policy to terminate any protestors from service. I can say more only after learning what exactly happened there,” Govindan told reporters in Thiruvananthapuram.

But Anavoor said it was an imprudence on the part of employees.“They should have raised their complaint with the mayor. The present issue will be solved by her,” he told reporters. It is learnt that the mayor will hold a meeting with the employees, probably on Monday. Workers under the Chalai circle office of the city corporation dumped the food they bought for Onam celebration in the aerobic bins at their office on Saturday. They did so in protest against their supervising officers who allegedly assigned them duty to clean drains before the Onam sadya. They claimed that they were forced to work up to 12.30pm though the shift ends at 11am.

But a video of their protest which went viral on social media invited wide criticism from the public. The initial reports were that the staffers refused to work on the day and protested when they were asked to.
Mayor Arya Rajendran later suspended seven permanent employees and sacked four temporary workers who participated in the protest.

The disciplinary action however backfired on the mayor following a TNIE report that the employees had worked for extended hours on the day. The employees also revealed that the officers rejected their request to postpone the drain cleaning to afternoon or the next day. Ironically, all the workers who faced action are members of the Thiruvananthapuram Municipal Corporation Workers Association affiliated with the CITU.

Four of the eleven staffers who faced action are women, including a widow. Three of them belong to Scheduled Tribes and six are from Scheduled Castes. Among the four suspended staffers, two are SC women, one SC man and a widow.  

It is learnt that the mayor took the disciplinary action after consultation with Nagappan. But the knee-jerk reaction went against the party’s stand on workers’ right to protest. Dalit rights activists and several Leftist social media influencers made scathing criticism on the disproportionate punishment given to the employees.