World’s lowest paid workers: Indian cleaners get just £64 after 40 YEARS of scrubbing toilets without a day off (and they’ve never had a pay rise!)
For more than 40 years they’ve toiled away, meticulously scrubbing and cleaning toilets in southern India
However, astonishingly, two dedicated cleaners in India have only £64 EACH to show for their four decades of working their fingers to the bone.
Akku and Leela Sherigar have earned an average of 180 rupees – or £2 – a year. And for the last 11 years the have worked for free following a dispute with their employer.
he two women, both aged 59, started working as toilet cleaners for the Government’s Women Teacher’s Training Institute, in South India, in 1971, for 15 Rupees (18p) a month as fresh-faced 18-year-olds.
But they’ve not had a pay rise ever since, even though they have never missed a day’s work.
Even though they are angry, they’ve now applied to the Guinness Book of World Records for the title of the lowest salary in the world.
Akku said: ‘We were promised a pay rise every year but it never came. We trusted our employers that eventually they’d pay us. We never believed it’d come to this.
‘We take pride in our work; we couldn’t give it up. We have always hoped that we would get what we were promised.’
In 2001, they finally had enough and complained to the Karnataka Administrative Tribunal, in Udupi, near Goa, in southwest India.
Then, their wages stopped altogether with no mention of any reimbursement.
But the dedicated women still went into work cleaning 21 toilets, three times a day, seven days a week.
And for the last 11 years, they have worked for free.
Ravindranath Shanbhag, president of the Human Rights Protection Foundation, in Udupi, has been helping the women take their case to the Supreme Court of India.
However, even though the Karnataka Administrative Tribunal ordered the government to pay out, in 2003, nothing was given to the women.
And even after the same decision from the High Court of Karnataka, in 2004, and the Supreme Court, in 2010, concluded the government should pay out, they are yet to do so.
With the help of the Indian press and local support Akku and Leela are now praying they’ll get what they’re deserved, plus interest, before they can happily retire next year.
‘All we want is what is due to us, what our hard work through the past 42 years deserves,’ Akku added.
SOURCE- Daily Mail , UK
Don’t Blame Govt.
Don’t Blame Statuary Bodies too..
We are having Laws related to Wages like this.
The Payment of Wages Act, 1936
The Payment of Wages Rules, 1937
The Payment of Wages (AMENDMENT) Act, 2005
The Minimum Wages Act, 1948
The Minimum Wages (Central) Rules, 1950
The Unorganized Workers’ Social Security Act 2008
The Unorganized Workers’ Social Security Rules 2008
The Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry
latrines Prohibition Act, 1993
But Friends .. who is there to Execute ?
We too cheat the society anyhow in our daily routines, willingly.
We are the People who derail Gandhi in station of Pietermaritzburg.
Once we Saw the news we post comments. & continuing our duty
Dear indians stop commenting do honor the Ladies like we having to work in offices , houses, & even small vendors.
-Angry Indian
I am really soluting them to doing this job so long period with loweeeeeeeeeeeeeeest salary.I pray to God to get this record. Really this record they deserved.Some of the country recruting for this job from other country .I will tell them even though they are paying money.but they should solute them for doing this job. people should understand this job require more service mind.
I seriously doubt if they can make it to the Guinness Book record. There are hundreds of tea garden workers in Darjeeling who are paid less than £10 a week. They have been working in tea gardens for generations.
It is pathetic,can happen only in India.But why it is so?
Work is worship
Salute to the proud worker.
Is we are living in democratic country ?
Is there any law is there to rule the country?
what is our courts is doing here ? once deliver the order work is over.
Problem in our constitution & nobody is not bothered to check the court order is delivered properly to the needy poor people.
Please woke up (court)and do your work properly where is left.
It is shameful for a State Govt. which does not take care of its citizen and that too to a scavenger who works to clean the toilets of an educational organisation. Is this our educational system that teaches us?
In this entire story, there was no mentioning about their lifestyle – whether they had married life and how they survived for their upkeep etc.
Hope not just recognition by Guinness Record which may give some monetary relief but the STate Govt. will do its part to clean its face not with the ladies’ clothes but of their own.
I have doubt if they can make it to Guinness Book. There are hundreds of tea garden workers all across India, specially Darjeeling, who are paid less than £45 a month.