Embedded Files
Status (As on 19th Feb 2018):
2018-02-02: Hamara Manch issues an update, indicating that the issue is broadening to Hall messes and puts things in perspective.
Most important summary till now The Coming New Contracts in the Hall Messes: A Hamara Manch Update
The alumni petition is still relevant, please do sign!
A selection of reports you may want to read: VH One Month After the New Contract: A Saga of Broken Promises and Worker Exploitation, VH New Contract – 7 Days Down: An Assessment, comparison of tender documents, detailed Presentation on the issue, a note on the professionalism (hiring process) of the new contractor, and the first seven day update.
A summary of how the first seven days of contract unfolded reveals that fears of the community may have come true, both in terms of labor abuse, and also maintenance quality. See a report here. In summary:
In the backdrop of significant collective action : including the silent march attended by over 1200 workers, daily meetings attended by at least 500 workers if not more, and the open house attended by around 150 academic community members the administration broadly agreed to retain the worker but has been non-commital on dates, or the nature of jobs they will be assigned.
As on this date, 40 workers are still without jobs.
As importantly significant labor abuse continues: no log-in/log-out time is maintained, and we have heard workers being overworked for as long as sixteen hours. The migrant workers which are brought in from far away to maintain the VH are spending almost all their time in the premises and have to therefore sleep at arbitrary hours, intermittently, and anywhere (for example, behind the fridge in one case!). Older workers are also being abused.
In the meanwhile, as predicted by the campus community members, the new contract is turning out to be significantly problematic, not merely from the point of view of labor, but also the quality of services have been seriously compromised.
For example, the food quality has seen at least three written complaints from the visitors in the first seven days itself, which include serious problems like finding a fly in the food and being served rotten milk-based dessert.
More importantly, with the "turnkey" nature of contract (that is contractor is no longer being paid per-expense as earlier, but a fixed in-total price, locked in for several years, for which the bid was made) has ensured a systemic cost-cutting in quality: reusing chicken a week old, washing and reusing paneer from cooked meal, etc.
Summary: Since 2010, housekeeping, catering, operation and general maintenance of VH and allied facilities (VH extension, visiting faculty apartments, VH lounge and PBCEC, outreach auditorium and main auditorium) are done by 74 workers working under the private contractor N Kumar Associates. In the second week of August it was communicated to the workers that services of 72 of the existing workers will be terminated on August, 31st.
Nowhere are the services of workers is terminated on such large scale without due process only on change of the management/contractor. Note that even in campus, pursuant to continuous engagement of the community, a continuity of workers was often maintained on change of contract.
The express fear of the community is the following:
This is happening primarily to negate the hard won battles for provisions of minimum wage, EPS, and ESI (in which Citizens' Forum was also involved): as was often the case in the past, contractor is bringing its own set of workers to ensure that it does not have to pay legally due wages to the current set of workers.
As is been frequently reported by various community members, the new set of workers will be hired on only an advance payment of "bribe". By several suggestions, the present rate is around 40,000/- to 50,000/- rupees to get placed as a new contract worker.
That this is a test case: several mess contracts are up for renewal soon. and it is likely that for the same reasons, we will be looking at an even larger number of dismissals in the campus.
Note that:
Amongst the workers, 60 of them are working from or before 2010 and there are even workers employed here since the 1990’s. In all these years their services received nothing but applause from the guests.
IITK visitors hostel is one of the best of its kind in the country -- this is evident from the appreciations and comments the workers received from numerous guests, in recent years even including the President of Afghanistan who visited our campus, but indeed a lot of us as alumni. See the reviews on google plus, for example.
This is happening in the city of Kanpur where the double whammy of demonetization (relevant for all small scale industry) and the emerging difficulties in cattle trade (relevant for the tanneries) has ensured that the options outside the campus are severely limited.
An evolving timeline (reverse chronological order):
2018-02-02: Hamara Manch issues a very important update which puts things in perspective. We are going to see a repeat of developments in VH in the Hall messes in spite of considerable opposition.
2018-01-24: A concerned alumnus had filed RTIs related to VH contract whose response was recently received. The details are below:
(Editor's Note: Some personally identifying information was removed from the scanned documents).2017-11-11: Original RTI
2017-11-13: IITK Response
2018-01-24: Additional response (documents) after payment of RTI fees
2017-11-26:
2017-11-07: A non-response from Sarovar.
2017-11-06: Citizens' Forum's response to Sarovar group.
2017-10-31: An IITK alumni has prepared a note on the murky ownership of Sarovar hotels: The Ownership of Sarovar.
2017-10-26:
Response to RTI query made on 4th October by a campus community member received.
Note that most important questions are not addressed in the response!
Also note that the response suggests that the contract has not yet been signed, as opposed to what they had being publicly saying to the campus community!
2017-10-24: Open house in the campus regarding the evolving situation. Note that similar contracts are coming up in the hostel messes as well.
2017-10-09: A response from Sarovar Hotel/Louvre Group.
Editor's comment: entirely contentless and generic!
2017-10-08: Concerned community members have released a new report: VH One Month After the New Contract: A Saga of Broken Promises and Worker Exploitation.
2017-09-25: We respond further to the Sarovar Hotels/Louvre Group.
2017-09-08: We receive a response from Sarovar Hotels/Louvre Group.
Editor's comment: It is generic and does not seem to address the issues raised.
The claim that they "reviewed all employees" seem to be patently false, and that "50% of the old staff have been offered to join the Sarovar team" is also problematic at best, false at worst.
2017-09-01:
There is an Institute Advisory Committee Meeting.
A version of what happened in the meeting by special invitees.
The institute issues several communiques:
2017-08-31:
Citizens' Forum writes to Board of Governors for IITK on the issue, see the full letter here.
There is an indefinite sit-in/meeting at Valmiki Mandir by the agitating workers at 5:30pm. Around 500 1000 workers stay put till a decision is made. Around fifty students and faculty members also attend.
Earlier in the day around twelve faculty members write to the director in concern, since no official stand has been taken by the administration.
Several representatives (around 15 30) of the campus community (including workers, students, faculty) go on to meet Deputy Director while the workers wait in the Mandir compound, the Director is out of town, for a final settlement since the contract is ending today night.
However after several hours of discussions, no concrete agreement is made, though a significant progress is made. The final decision is postponed for next day, in the presence of the director.
Director suggests calling an Institute Advisory Committee meeting the next day to discuss the issue.
2017-08-30:
Around fifteen faculty members, on behalf of a broader concerned community, send an invitation for the open house on the issue. It is held in the evening.
See the invitation mail here, send from IITK Forum for critical thinking.
The "security" presence at the meeting -- a dozen SIS guards, strictly restricting entry to only faculty and students, and even humiliating alumni, became an issue in itself. See this public letter by an alumnus.
The administration seems to make a first public response by talking to VOX journalists (a campus newsletter).
See the article here.
A rejoinder was posted by a concerned alumnus as a comment, but was never approved by the maintainers of vox. We reproduce the comment here.
2017-08-29:
CF writes to Louvre group (France), which owns majority stake in Sarovar Hotels, see the letter here.
Hamara Manch releases a report on the "recruitment process" and "professionalism" of the new contractor. Find it here.
2017-08-28:
CF mails the petition with 103 signatures to the director. Note that further signatures are very much required and the petition is still running!
CF reminds the institute of our earlier letter which has gone unacknowledged.
CF writes to office bearers of Sarovar hotels, the new contractor. The full letter here.
The letter was posted yesterday, and is available here. This is the thread we will maintain, please ignore the earlier link.
2017-08-27:
See this detailed Presentation on the issue (ppt file, found here). (courtesy, IITK Forum for Critical Thinking).
See this comparison of tender documents.
CF writes to Sarovar Hotels, see the letter here.
2017-08-25:
The letter (from the campus community, not the alumni) is submitted to the administration with around 2000 physical signatures!
But it would seem that the administration is pretty unresponsive, and things are not moving forward.
Concerned faculty members meet Deputy director. Here are the minutes of the meetings (courtesy, IITK Forum for Critical Thinking).
2017-08-24: An unprecedented number of people attend the silent March! 1287 signatures collected physically after the march!
Resolution in Hindi, Resolution in English.Citizens' Forum sends an appeal to alumni to write letters and sign a petition.
Please sign the (alumni) petition here.
2017-08-23:
Several campus groups have issued a call to join the silent march. We are reproducing a call from IITK Forum for critical thinking, since it has several details.
Perhaps under evolving pressure, it seems that the contractor has offered jobs to seven more workers.
2017-08-22:
There is a public meeting pursuant to the meeting on Friday. This is attended by around five hundred six hundred (or more!) workers and around three four (or more!) dozen other community members (primarily students and faculty). There is a call for rally silent march on 24th of August in the institute on the issue.
Remark: It seems we were underestimating the numbers earlier! Any more eyewitness accounts will be welcome.Perhaps under evolving pressure, the contractor re-interviews interviews some more workers and also offers jobs to three more workers.
Citizens' Forum writes to the director on the issue, you can see the full letter here.
2017-08-19 and 2017-08-20: We are aware of a meetings initiated by some concerned campus community members (primarily students and faculty) with Director as well as with the contractor's representative. No concrete assurance to deal with the issue was made: the Director pleaded ignorance and suggested he would revert, and the contractor's representative also pleaded ignorance suggesting he was new, but also briefly suggesting that the workers are being dismissed because they want "more educated" people to take over the Visitor's Hostel.
2017-08-18: A public meeting takes place in the campus on the issue, primarily amongst workers, on the initiative of Hamara Manch.
Around four hundred workers participate, an unexpectedly large number, reflecting the seriousness of the concern.
Since this meeting saw an unexpectedly large participation, it was decided to rally campus constituencies as well as the alumni to engage with the issue further.
2017-08 (first half of the month): Workers Some workers are interviewed by the new contractor where, according to the accounts we have, the primary question asked was how much are they getting paid. Workers also meet the administration including the present deputy director with their concern. According to the workers, the deputy director questioned their competence, basically suggesting that if they cannot find jobs outside they are anyway best not hired inside IITK.
Some related documents:
Now a detailed summary comparison can be found at Comparison of tender documents. Some points from before:
Note that the "technical bid" is valued at 60%. In particular, the successful bidder is not necessarily the lowest bidder. There has been a continuing suggestion from various quarters that this encourages corruption in the process.
Evaluation points for technical bid are listed here. Note the vagueness of the formulation ("Client site visit" apart from "Presentation at IITK on the solution proposed" or the final point "Commitment of top management").
Unlike the previous tender document (see below), there are no specifics on how in particular the points of evaluation will be handed.
Previous tender document (2015) for comparison.
In particular note that on page 24, there is a detailed proposal for evaluation of technical bid, something entirely missing in the present document.
Editor's note: Since the situation is fluid and evolving, sporadically we are also receiving (minor) corrections. Therefore you might see explicitly marked retractions (like this, for example) in the text.
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