Deprived of their rights for unknown reason

Towhidul Alam

The Sweepers of Chittagong City Corporation want certainty about their jobs. Most of the cleaners known as shebok come from Horijon community.

They don’t have assurance about their job. They are deprived of all sorts of legal rights by the authority of cleaning department in City Corporation.

In fact some high concerned officials of Chittagong City Corporation (CCC) exploit shebok community in various ways. The authority don’t provide any kind of permanent appointment, the cleaning staffs don’t get any emergency leave and some time supervisors show absent in the attendance shit to take unfair financial advantage.

Most of the cleaning workers do not want to say anything about the exploitation done by authority. The main reason of this silence is most of workers are appointed on temporary basis and the ward supervisors take unfair financial advantage on the limitations of their job.

If any worker fails to remain present in the job due to his sickness immediately the employee will be sacked from his job. Then he has to satisfy his supervisor with money to get back his job. The worker has to compensate by giving 100 taka for his daily absence.

To get the temporary job one has to spend approximately 30000- 50000 taka and the authority doesn’t follow the job regulation. That’s why workers are not getting the facility of permanent job which is due within 3 months according to labour rule. Some of old workers said they got permanent appointment in 1988-89 fiscal years. Since then there is no permanent appointment of sweepers in City Corporation. Meanwhile the authority provides this kind of job to the Bengali community by taking bribe though the job is allocated for Horijon Community. For this reason many widows and orphans of Horizon community have been deprived of their legal appointments as sweepers in City Corporation.

Chittagong City Corporation has increased the salary of cleaning staffs from 2400 to 3600 taka for 2007-08 fiscal years. But sweepers can’t utilize these facilities due to their temporary job. Because, they have to satisfy their bosses from top to bottom. Lala Das, a former employee of CCC said “ I left this temporary job. I got only 120 taka daily but sometimes supervisor took 100 taka. That wasn’t enough for me. He also alleges against the authority of exploiting them”.

There is no labour rule law for the cleaning staffs. There is no casual leave, even women workers don’t get maternity leave. On the other hand most of the these workers are physically abused by their supervisors. There is no safety measure for women staffs who join their jobs even at 3pm midnight.

When contacted, Mr. S M Katebi , Head of the Cleaning Department in City Corporation avoided giving any straight answer.
The question remains, who are responsible to compel this community members to lead a miserable life? Are they beyon the reach of anti-corruption drag net?

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