Intellectuals and activists urge Karnataka to abolish contractual labour system

The open letter expressed solidarity with strong waste administration staff, whose protest with the identical demand entered its eleventh day on Friday. It referred to the chief minister’s 1 July 2022 assurance to abolish the contract system and convey all pourakarmikas underneath the direct fee system.

“Pourakarmikas working as rubbish automobile drivers and loaders have been on a strike for the previous few days, demanding that you just implement your written assurance made to them on 1st July 2022, that these staff could be free of the exploitative and unlawful contract system and introduced underneath the direct fee system,” learn the letter issued on Thursday.

“The contract labour system is nothing in need of bonded labour and is used to disclaim staff, who’re primarily from the Dalit neighborhood, their most simple rights. Beneath this method, the employees are usually not paid wages for months collectively, denied minimal wages, social advantages, weekly holidays and any depart, and so forth,” the letter stated, including that a few of these staff had been working for many years.

The letter referred to the chief minister’s 1 July 2022 assurance to abolish the contract system and convey all pourakarmikas underneath the direct fee system. (Specific Picture)

Organisations similar to Well being for All, Ahara Namma Hakku, Bahutva Karnataka, All India Legal professionals’ Affiliation for Justice, All India Individuals’s Discussion board, All India Progressive Girls’s Affiliation and All India College students’ Affiliation have signed the open letter.

The letter additional stated, “Regardless of the chief minister having made this announcement over eight months in the past, staff proceed to be compelled to work underneath extremely exploitative situations. It’s a matter of nice concern to us, as residents, that on one hand massive quantities of cash are given to those contractors and then again, the rights of the employees are trampled upon.”

The people who’ve signed the letter are as follows:

Baraguru Ramachandrappa, author and critic

Okay Marulasiddappa, author and poet

G Ramakrishna, author

Banjagere Jayaprakash, author and social activist

Roopa Hasan, poet

Okay S Vimala, girls rights activist

Janardhan Kasargadde, poet

Dr Vijayamma, veteran journalist and author

B Suresha, filmmaker and director

Mansore, film-maker and director

Veerasangaiah, farmer chief

D Gopalakrishna, farmer chief

Du Saraswati, author, poet and theatre-activist

Sabita Bannadi, author

Niranjan V P, educationist

Manjunath Adde, author and journalist

Leela Sampige, author

Dr Veena Shatrugna, retired deputy director, Nationwide Institute of Vitamin

Fr Anil D’Souza, Loyola Vikas Kendra, Mundgod

Dr Joseph Xavier, Indian Social Institute, Bangalore

Dr Sylvia Karpagam, public well being physician

Pauline Priya S, SS Enterprises, Bengaluru

Vinaya Okkunda, author and poet

Gulabi Bilimale, girls’s rights activist

Sandhya Rani, social activist

Akanksha, author

Ravikumar, author

Bharati Devi, author

S Byregowda, retired principal

Dr Okay Puttaswamy, senior author

Venkatesh Prasad, theatre activist

Umashankar Swamy, cinema director

Sahyadri Nagaraj, journalist

Deepa Girish, author

H N Arathi, author

Kiran Kumari, activist

Kavi Dayanand, author

N A M Ismail, senior journalist

Nagesh Bayalu, lecturer

H L Pushpa, senior author

Swarna Bhat, activist

Dr Jayalakshmi B, Author

L N Mukundraj, senior author

Narasimhaswamy, lecturer

Purushothama Okay, scholar

Ravikiran Rajendran, theatre activist

Shashank S R, scholar activist

Shreenidhi, activist