HC seeks TN’s response on non-payment of risk allowance

Recording the submission of the petitioner that the government had not implemented the direction by the National Commission for Safai Karamcharis (NCSK) to pay risk allowance to sanitary workers for their work during the pandemic, the first bench comprising Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy sought the counsel appearing for the State to get instructions and file a counter affidavit setting out the terms and payments of risk allowance for sanitary workers.

The petitioner’s counsel submitted that the role of sanitary workers during the pandemic period was immense, as they had braved the pandemic and served the society despite gross failure of the State in providing them adequate safety gears. Now, the government was also refusing to pay risk allowance to such hapless workers while including several other frontline workers for grant of risk allowance, the counsel said.

The plea had sought for strict and proper implementation of Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and Rehabilitation Act, 2013, and pointed out that despite repeated directions issued by the Supreme Court and NCSK from time to time, the risk allowances have not been paid.