Coimbatore: The Tamil Nadu Water Supply and Drainage Board Workers’ Union has demanded regularisation of contract workers and appropriate steps to fill the vacancies. In a release here, C.Ayyappan, general secretary of the Coimbatore-Nilgiris unit of the union pointed out that the board had appointed a number of contract workers from 1998 to maintain many schemes that supplied protected water to the people and expressed resentment over the board appointing new contract workers instead of regularising the existing contract workers to maintain the schemes.
The contract workers are paid a very measly sum as wages even though they put in 12 hours to 16 hours of work every day. The union wanted these workers to be regularised with effect from their date of joining on contract basis. The State Government had issued an order for the filling up of 2,037 vacancies in order to have enough workers to maintain drinking water schemes such as the Siruvani and Pilloor schemes.