With meagre amount of money as remuneration and extremely-high risk jobs, nothing much has been done for their benefit in any walk of life. The daily wage and contractual workers of JSEB are living a life of penury and putting their lives at risk each day at work.
They risk their lives on high voltage electric poles every day and still struggle to earn their families one square meal a day. The organisations that they work for, does not recognise them as its employees and their conditions remain unchanged even after playing with death virtually every day.
“In total, there are some 3,500 daily wages plus contractual workers working in State, out of which only 850 are board sanctioned ,and since everyday 3,500 workers come to work, the salary of 850 workers is distributed among them,” said Ashish Kumar, Central Secretary, Jharkhand State Electric Workers Association.
“I cannot send my children to school and there are nights we sleep without food,” said Birdayal Murmu, a daily wage worker for JSEB. Regularisation is being demanded for the daily wage workers for a long time now, but any solid steps in terms of the fulfilment of these demands are still awaited. “We sat on Dharna for the regularisation of these workers and for the provision of basic security gears to them in April, Board also assured to sanction posts as soon as any vacancy comes,” Kumar said.
Although unions are voicing the needs of these workers time and again, meanwhile pole workers are still losing their lives working on high power electric poles without any safety gear. “The families of the deceased workers are offered normal compensation and no job guaranty,” Kumar added. “I am the sole bread winner in my family and if that means putting my life to risk, I have no option, I feed three children and a wife,” Babulal Tirkey, another daily wage worker said.
Meanwhile, the JSEB is still unsuccessful to formulate any solid rules regarding regularisation of daily wages workers. “No appointment rules have been confirmed yet,” said PK Shrivastava, JSEB PRO.