Stop exploiting own citizens in govt jobs, HC tells govt

CHENNAI: The Madras High Court had ruled that the state government should stop exploiting its own citizens and further stressed that it should act as model employer when making appointments in the government.

A division bench of Justice RM Subramanian and Justice Sathi Kumar Sukamara Kurup, made the observation on dismissing a writ appeal preferred by the Secretary to Municipal Administration and Water Supply Department, Commissioner to Municipal Administration Department and Coimbatore Municipal Corporation.

The appellant authorities prayed for a direction to set aside the order of a single judge to regularise a set of original petitioners, before it, as drivers from the date on which they were regularised as sanitary workers.

When the matter was taken up the judges held that though the petitioners were appointed as sanitary workers they were made to do the work of drivers, which admittedly has a higher pay scale.

Calling out it as an exploitation by the state, the judges noted that they had been coming across incidents, on a daily basis, where the government was found guilty of exploiting its own citizens and the same practice has to stop.

“The persons who are in charge of recruitment and administration must realise that the government should act as the model employer. At the least, the government is expected to act fairly. When there are several statutes which protect the workers in private establishments, they are made inapplicable to the government as the state is expected to desist from adopting unfair labour practice,” the High court ruled, adding, “Such exemptions were implanted in the statutes with a hope that the government will not indulge in exploitation. But, the experience has been otherwise. We, therefore, have no hesitation in confirming the order of the writ court.”