By The Hindu Bureau
Copyright thehindu
AITUC members staged a demonstration here on Wednesday demanding the revival of old pension scheme as promised by the ruling DMK in its poll manifesto for 2021 Assembly elections and formulation of ‘Labour Welfare Policy’ by the Tamil Nadu Government by involving trade unions and the experts drawn from various government departments and academic institutions.
The protesters, while welcoming the State Government’s initiatives for attracting industrial investments in Tamil Nadu, urged the government to guarantee the legal rights of the workers by diligently enacting legal provisions.
In the guise of ensuring ‘ease of doing business’, the Union Government had introduced new Acts giving legal backing for exploitation of working class. Hence, the DMK government, which was projecting itself as ‘worker-friendly government’, should formulate laws for protecting the workers’ welfare.
The Tamil Nadu Government, which was steadily increasing the number of temporary workers in the permanent posts, should give up this move, besides abolishing the practice of outsourcing of government department works to private firms, which were giving meagre amount as daily wages.
The outsourcing of sanitary operations would leave the downtrodden, who could find permanent jobs in the rural and urban civic bodies, in deep trouble.
“Above all, the DMK government, which had promised in its poll manifesto for Assembly elections 2021 of reviving the old pension scheme after trashing the new contributory pension scheme, is yet to fulfill this poll promise. Instead, an ‘interim report’ by a Commission constituted for this purpose had been submitted to the government, which is a diversionary tactics,” the protesters said.
The industrial disputes pertaining to gratuity, minimum salary, compensation etc. should be resolved at the earliest by the Department of Labour Welfare. However, the officials of this department were ‘mechanically’ approaching these cases and hence, the trials were getting dragged for several years, the protesters complained.