Jaipur: Approximately 120 housekeeping and sanitation workers at the Malviya National Institute of Technology (MNIT) in Jaipur have been staging a protest outside the campus over the sudden termination of their contracts.The MNIT administration has awarded the tender for housekeeping work this year to a company called Orion Security Solutions Private Limited, which wants to appoint its own employees. “When we reached the campus for work on July 26, the security guard didn’t let us in and told that the administration has appointed a new contractor who would get new workers in our place,” Prem Chand, a campus sanitation worker and leader of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) at MNIT told The Wire.Even the previous contractor has not been officially told by the administration that its contract has ended. “We have been associated with housekeeping work at MNIT for the past eight years, yet the administration is not bothered to follow due procedure and give us a notice period if the tender has been awarded to a different company. If it had, we could have at least informed our workers a month ago to look for new jobs,” said Deepak Jain, in-charge at HR Professionals, the previous housekeeping contractor for MNIT.The workers claim that the administration has not made any attempt to speak to them. “Those officers who used to keep calling us every now and then for some work or the other suddenly don’t want to see us on campus,” said Guddi, a housekeeping worker at MNIT. “They are not even letting us protest outside the campus. The guard threatens to have us arrested if we do not leave soon.”Also read: After the 2015 Floods, Chennai Only Exploited the People Who Were Cleaning itThese workers are appointed as contractual labourers at MNIT and the administration invites tenders every year for housekeeping work. However, for the last decade, the same company has received the tender and retained the same workers each time.Manju, who has been working at MNIT for two decades now, said, “I have been working here since the time when they used to pay us Rs 20 per day. I’ve gave up my youth to work here, who is going to appoint me now, that too at this age?”Guddu, Manju and Sita have been working at MNIT for two decades. Image: Shruti JainAccording to the workers, the new contractor who has been awarded the tender has reduced the number of sanitation workers. Earlier, 72 sanitation workers used to work in the campus’s academic area.While inviting tenders, the MNIT administration had quoted a minimum of 51 workers for the housekeeping work in its manpower requirement – three skilled housekeeping supervisors and 48 unskilled housekeepers. The newly-appointed contractor will be appointing only 51 workers. “It is beyond our understanding why the administration has cut down the cost of 21 housekeeping workers without any discussion with the contractor or the labourers, when the amount of work is the same,” said Jain.Also read: Manual Scavengers in Rajasthan Struggle to Be Recruited as Govt Sanitation WorkersSpeaking to The Wire, MNIT registrar Jay Narayan said, “We have not removed any sanitation worker or the housekeeping staff. As a part of procedure each year, the tender of the housekeeping work was awarded to a company that quoted the lowest bid. It is not our concern if the company has reduced the number of workers. We tell our work requirement, it doesn’t matter with how many workers, the contractor will get the work done.”“Technically, their employer is the company that gets the tender, not us, and it’s also not the liability of the employer to appoint the same workers all over again since they are not permanent workers. Every decision depends on the budget we receive,” he added.Sanitation workers protest outside the MNIT campus. Image: Shruti JainThe workers also claim that the administration has given the tender to a blacklisted company. As per documents accessed by The Wire, Orion has been blacklisted by Indian Institute of Technology, Patna and National Institute of Technology, Uttarakhand. “Orion was blacklisted from these institutes because it didn’t pay the minimum wages to the workers as fixed by the Central government,” said Jain, the previous housekeeping contractor.This is in contrast to MNIT’s tender document for providing housekeeping, cleaning and sanitation services through a service contract for the academic (institutional) area. The eligibility criteria for applying agencies says, “The tenderer has not been debarred and/or blacklisted by any central government/ or any state government department(s) and the tenderer should not have any litigation in any of the labour court(s).”However, the administration seems to have no issues with it. “A company may be blacklisted by a particular institution but that doesn’t mean it cannot apply for work at other places,” said Narayan.#Grit is an initiative of The Wire dedicated to the coverage of manual scavenging and sanitation and their linkages with caste, gender, policy and apathy. The Manual Scavenging Project is the first in a series of deep dive editorial projects.
