As you read this, more than 30 daily wage workers are working day in and day out to keep our mammoth campus’s water supply and sewage infrastructure up and running. Alas, without timely wages!
On August 1, Vox reported on the 18 workers who were fired from the water-supply department of the Institute without any prior notice (here). On August 30, four weeks after their demands for re-employment were not met, the workers staged an indefinite dharna (here). Meanwhile, all has not been well with the retained workers either.
For the last three months, since the contractor was changed, they haven’t received their salaries in time. The salaries for the month of August were paid by the contractor on 29 September, i.e. almost a month after August ended. Moreover, as of writing of this report on 30 October, they have not received wages for the month of September yet.
To put this in perspective, the workers have sustained for three months on a mere month’s wages. Also, the wages paid are the minimum wages (in accordance to the Central Minimum Wages set by the Government). This is 663 rupees per day for unskilled workers, and only accounts for basic sustenance needs.
Our team found out that this is in clear violation to the terms of the contract. As per the Water Supply contract, the Institute is bound by the Payment of Wages Act, 1936. According to Clause 5(1)(b) of the Payment of Wages Act (linked here), the workers
“shall be paid before the expiry of the tenth day, after the last day of the wage-period in respect of which the wages are payable”.
This means the wages for August must be paid latest by 10 September, and similarly wages for September must be paid latest by 10 October. In effect, the salary was delayed beyond the maximum allowed date, by about 3 weeks for August and more than 3 weeks (and counting) for September.
It must be noted that most of these workers are sole earners in the family. During the year-long pandemic period, they were either unemployed or on meager salaries (due to less work days). Consequently, the pandemic not only depleted all their savings, but also put them deep in debt. Freshly out of the pandemic, a salary delay of nearly 3 weeks has been catastrophic and has left them with no options but to take further loans to add to their debt.
Vox team questioned the DoIP (Dean of Infrastructure & Planning) on the Institute administration’s stance on salary delays. He said (via email):
“There are issues in the new water supply contract. The Institute is exploring legal options.”
Unfortunately, salary delays for daily wage workers is commonplace in other departments of the Institute as well. For example, the wages of sanitation workers in Hall 6 were also delayed by 12 days in March and by 40 days in April (owing to change in contract), but have gotten back on track since then. Similarly a Hall 13 mess worker told us that he received his salary on 22nd of a month (12 days delay from the allowed deadline of 10th day of the month). However, the delay in the water supply department has stretched for over three months and is one the worst delays in recent times.
Addendum: As per the contract, the Institute, as the principal employer, is obliged to pay the wages in case there is a delay in payments, as was the case here.
Written by – Aarish Khan, Aditya Mishra, Gauravi Chandak, Mutasim Khan, Shreya Verma, Tanuja Kaleli
Edited by – Abhimanyu Sethia, Aryan Pandeya, Bhavya Sikarwar
Design Credits – Praneat Data, Atharv Jiwane
