Noon meal workers commence indefinite protest across state

Chennai

Putting forth a host of demands, noon meal workers staged dharna across the state and unlike their previous protests they refused to cook for students to grab the attention of the State government.

“Parents and public should understand our situation. It is the government that has forced us to go for the indefinite protest by not heeding to our demands,” said Kesavan, Chennai District Secretary, TNNMEA, at the protest staged near Ripon Building.

Their demands include to make the noon meal workers as permanent government employees and to given them time scale pay, to bring the retired noon meal workers under family pension scheme and to give them at least Rs 9,000 as pension per month, a gratuity of Rs 5 lakh per noon meal worker, maternity leave of 270 days for women noon meal workers like the State government women employees, to handover the General Provident Fund (GPF) on the day of retirement and to handover the pending amount that was deducted for 21 months from them.

With the host of demands, the noon meal workers staged dharna across the state. They staged road roko in several parts of the state and were taken into custody by policemen.

However, no government official held talks with the protesters and no steps were taken to cook food for the students, who were made to go to their homes with empty stomachs.