TRICHY: The Tiruchirappalli Corporation
is trying to woo male wards of sanitary workers for its recent
cleanliness drive and as many as eight community organizers representing
the four divisions, are going from door-to-door persuading them to join
the work. At present, around 60% of the 2,000-odd sanitary workers are
women and take care of the cleaning process.

Corporation commissioner V P Dhandapani
told TOI that they were planning to form male self-help groups on the
model of the existing women’s groups, consisting of a minimum of 20
members each. These groups will be engaged to do an assortment of
cleaning work and will be paid as per the district collector’s
recommendations. Since the corporation was facing a debilitating
shortage of staff in the sanitary division, it has now resorted to
roping in the wards of the existing sanitary workers. While the general
perception was that there were not many takers for the menial work, the
commissioner who took over the reins two months ago sounded very
optimistic. “There is a huge response to the scheme and more than 1,500
people have come forward to work with us,” he said. In the first phase,
the corporation will employ a total of 160 sanitary workers who will be
distributed equally among the four divisions.

Earlier, the
corporation had opted to outsource the cleaning work, but the plan did
not take off on expected lines. The outsourcing plan also faced
opposition from some quarters as they suspected it might lead to
financial corruption. The new commissioner embarked on the mass cleaning
with the available workforce that was not busy in the afternoons, but
since the additional work did not entail any additional remuneration, it
too did not bring in the desired results. The sporadic cleaning was
temporarily given up after ministers visited the city. However,
Dhandapani said that half of the city was covered in the last two months
and that the remaining places would be cleaned in the next two months.
He added that the work would be sustained with the new workforce for
three months to start with, and that the scheme would be ratified in the
forthcoming council meeting on July 31.

Moreover, the
recruitment of the 160 people would be done through what the
commissioner termed as the internal tender process. It is also an
attempt to augment the income of a sanitary worker’s household. They
will be used for an assortment of corporation work such as cleaning the
wards wherever the regular sanitary workers cannot cope up as well as
maintaining streetlights, parks, roads and the underground drainage
system. They will be directly recruited on a contractual basis and will
be given priority when the regular recruitment drive takes place in
future.

Once they form a group, they will also be guided to get
bank loans to start any self employment venture and community organizers
would help them in this regard. Those who perform well would be
assigned various pending works of the corporation on a contractual
basis. They will be paid a daily wage of Rs 158 and all the aspiring
workers would have to register with the corporation first, the
commissioner explained.

The corporation had on December 21 last
year, passed a resolution to outsource garbage cleaning to private
parties for the first time. The places to be covered were the
100-year-old congested Gandhi Market and the Central Bus Stand and then
it was planned to be extended to the rest of the city. But after the
Trichy District Sanitary Workers Union took a strong exception to the
proposed outsourcing, the idea was kept on the back burner.