Kendrapara: Despite the Supreme Court saying that minimum wage is a fundamental right of every worker, be it in government or private organisations, the security guards at Integrated Child Development Services office (ICDS) in Kendrapara district have been getting Rs 52.50 wage per day for 12 hours work.
Sources said Bhikari Charan Swain, Ranjan Kumar Sethi, Debendra Kumar Lenka and Ananta Kumar Sahoo have been working as security guards at the ICDS office on contractual basis since 2004.
When they had joined as security guards, their wage was fixed at Rs 11 per day for 12 hours work to which Ananta of Rajnagar filed a complaint at the Odisha Administrative Tribunal office. Following the complaint of Ananta, the tribunal had increased their salary from Rs 11 to Rs 52.50 per day.
According to Ananta, the four also registered a complaint at the Collector office in 2014. Then sub-divisional Magistrate directed the District Social Welfare Officer of ICDS to increase the wage of the security guards to Rs 150 from Rs 52.50.
Then district Collector also instructed the departmental authority to pay the wage as decided by the sub-divisional Magistrate to the security guards. The Collector also advised the ICDS authority to write a letter to the departmental officer of state government in order to avail funds for the increased wage of security guards.
However, the ICDS authority has not carried out any of the instruction, alleged Ananta.
There are 65 security guards employed in 314 blocks of the district and all of them are suffering from the same situation. The security guards have been running from pillar to post – starting from the courts to various offices— but no help came for them.
An official of ICDS department said the lower level contractual employees are being neglected due to the non-cooperation of the higher officials.
Notably, as per a report available from the Labour department, minimum wages have been defined as the minimum amount of remuneration that an employer is required to pay wage earners for the work performed during a given period, which cannot be reduced by collective agreement or an individual contract. “The minimum amount is required for a worker to meet their family expenditure, preserve their health, and keep them efficient at their jobs.”
In a notification dated April 30, 2018, the office of the Labour Commissioner, Bhubaneswar, revised the minimum wages including Variable Dearness Allowance (VDA) applicable to unskilled, semi-skilled, skilled and highly skilled categories of employees. The notification said for unskilled and semi-skilled workers the wage should be Rs 224.30 and it should be Rs 264.30 for skilled and Rs 284.30 for highly skilled workers.
MOREOVER
The Economic Survey 2020 has pitched for an effective minimum wage policy. Country’s present minimum wage system is complex. The wage policy has 1,915 minimum wages defined for various scheduled job categories across various states. One in every three wage workers in India is not protected by the minimum wage law in India.
PNN