Desolate Condition of 2.32 Lakh Lowly Paid Mid-day Meal Workers in West Bengal Irks Trade Union

Kolkata: Rabeya- one of the 15 members of a 17-member Self-help group (SHG) who looks after the mid-day meal project in Narendra Shiksha Niketan of South  24 Parganas district which has a student strength of 1200 students told NewsClick about the institutional apathy that the Government- both at the Centre and State showers the 2.32 lakh midday workers in West Bengal with.

“We get about  Rs 40 after putting in a hard day's labour from 7 am to 4 pm. Teachers come to school at 11 am but we have to go to the market to source fresh food items for the students and start cooking the meals for the students. After the mid-day meal is over, it takes another  two hours for us to wash the utensils and we go home  around  4 pm in the afternoon. We are not recognised as workers by the Indian government or the state government. Our appointment is from the District Education Officers (DEO) office and we are paid Rs1500 and that too for 10 months in exchange for 12 months of work. Our honorarium gets delayed and is not regular,” Rabeya told NewsClick. 

She further added that their jobs are subject to termination on a whim by the ruling party’s leaders and it corresponds with which party wins the elections. During the pandemic, they were ordered to supply raw food items to the students’ families which they sourced from local markets without being provided sanitisers or masks- thereby, putting their lives at risk.

Image credit: Sandip Chakraborty

However, after the lockdown ended, the Block Development Office (BDO) decided to supply the food to the schools while the responsibility of Rabeya's SHG remained to package the food in hygienic conditions. Interestingly, the BDO does not float any tender to do the work of supplying food items for the mid-day meal projects.

While midday workers are paid Rs1500 for 10 months for 12 months of work in West Bengal, in Andhra Pradesh a midday meal worker gets Rs 3000, Haryana Rs7000 for 12 months, Himachal Pradesh Rs3950, Punjab Rs3000 for 12 months, Karnataka Rs2700, Kerala Rs12000, with Tamilnadu dispensing an equivalent wage of a Grade 4 Government employee to their mid-day meal workers. 

For each student of the primary section, per-day spending by the Government is Rs 4.92 ( apart from rice and  potato) and for the upper primary section- which is from Class 6 to 8, it is RS  7.45. In 2011- that is after the present Government of the state was sworn into office, many  midday meal workers were terminated.

In areas with a higher strength of the Paschimbanga Mid-day meal Karmi Union (PBMDMKU), the union protested resulting in the reinstatement of many workers. In Rabeya’s locality, in three places including Jharkhali, cases were filed in the court and in one case- even after winning the litigation, the mid-day meal workers were not allowed to enter the school premises.

During the time of calamities or during elections the self-help group members are also forced to cook food for the officials sans any honorarium.  They do not get any maternity leave and are outside any social security net- unlike the project workers of other central schemes like the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS).

Most of the midday meal workers of the state come from  marginal backgrounds and 92 % of them are female workers. “We are trying to unionise the haplessly tortured  Midday meal workers and bring them under a single roof”, Madhumita Banerjee of  PBMDMKU told NewsClick. 

Midday meal workers under the guidance of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) have started demanding better pay and social security networks and maternity benefits for their members.  Where the union is strong, there the problems of retrenchment can be thwarted. However, in places where the unions are not strong, local ruling party leaders terminate the self-help groups or the cooks from service of their own accord.

“In general, a help group member gets Rs 500 to Rs700 while working on a midday meal project. This system, to some extent, has been thwarted after Bank payments to sanctioned post holders' accounts have been made mandatory in some districts. But still, in many cases, the sanctioned post holders have to enter into an agreement with self-help group members and divide their salary equally amongst other group members,” Bannerjee told NewsClick. 

Sunil Nati, President of PBMDMKU highlighted that there has not been an increase in the wage of midday meal workers since 2011. He told NewsClick, “in September 2020, at a meeting in Burdwan, the present West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee mooted the idea whether   Mid-day meal workers' work could be covered under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA)- 100 days work programme.”

The union now has decided to submit a memorandum to various block development officers on a 13-point demand which includes payment of 12 months' wage in lieu of 12 months' work unlike the present system of payment for 10 months work, a minimum increase of wage of the cooks to Rs 21000 and scrapping off anti-worker labour code.   As per the recommendation of various government committees to give protein-rich diets, they have also demanded that grants for each primary student should be increased to Rs 10 and to Rs 15 for the upper primary level.