NALSAR students' group allege exploitation of contract workers

The allegation is that NALSAR contract workers are being exploited as they are not being given proper wages 
File photo of NALSAR | (Pic: Express)
File photo of NALSAR | (Pic: Express)

The National Academy of Legal Studies and Research (NALSAR), a national law university in Hyderabad, has been accused of violating labour laws by the Workers Welfare Society, a student-run informal body that advocates for workers’ rights on campus. The society claims that the administration has not paid minimum wages to contract workers for several years, and now that a new tender is in process, workers are being offered only the bare minimum without any compensation for past losses as reported by The New Indian Express.

The university employs four types of contract workers: sanitation, security, gardening and mess workers, with sanitation staff being the most vulnerable. According to a bill submitted by the contractor and approved by the university in January 2023, workers receive a wage of Rs 311 per day, from which their provident fund, health insurance and contractor's profit are deducted.

It has been alleged that sanitation workers, who clean toilets in hostels, lack safety equipment such as masks and gloves. A female employee who experienced dizziness due to the smell of acid slipped while cleaning a bathroom.

Workers speak
Not only was there no compensation, but the worker also missed a month's salary because she was unable to work with a broken arm. C Anjamma, a sanitation worker who has been working at the university for 14 years broke her rib as she fell while chased by monkeys. She was not given any compensation as she was at home for two months. She receives Rs 300 per day, including overtime, and does not get a weekly day off, earning a maximum of Rs 9,000 per month. Another gardening worker who has been working at the university for 17 years receives no PF till now. She fears termination if her identity is revealed.

Ajay Kranthi, a fifth-year law student at the university said that a security worker who used to talk to him about the ill-treatment she faced, was terminated in November last year, alleging poor performance and having love affairs with students. “There is an unwritten rule that workers should not speak to students," he said.

When the Workers Welfare Society raised the issue, a committee consisting of two labour law professors, Dr Vasanthi Nimushakavi and Prakhar Ganguly, was formed and they admitted that workers are being underpaid and highlighted several issues faced by workers. They proposed that they should receive a wage of at least Rs 600 per day which was later decided to be Rs 415 by the administration. Officials claim that the new tender will be approved within two weeks.

The students believe that the wage is still insufficient and they also allege that the administration is not ready to implement GO 60 of the Telangana government which mandates that category-I contract workers should receive at least Rs 15,600 per month.

"We are very unhappy with the way the workers have been treated. That is why we are proactively trying to help them," said Dr K. Vidyulatha Reddy, the registrar of the university. "We want to do it in a legally and procedurally correct way," she said and refused to comment further.

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