Your report to IITK, From: Citizens' Forum, Dated: 1st Nov 2013

Next in thread > Re: Your report to IITK, From: David Thomas Dated:1st Nov 2013

From: Citizens' Forum

To: David Thomas

Subject: Your report to IITK

Date: Fri, 1 Nov 2013 00:17:32 +0000

Dear Mr. Thomas,

I am writing to you on behalf of Citizens’ Forum of IITK alumni.

For the last several years a group of alumni, Citizens’ Forum (CF), has been involved in the struggle for human rights of contract workers at our alma mater. It has had several discussions with IITK administration and produced two reports on the condition of contract workers – one in 2010 and the other in 2012. Recommendations of these reports are yet to be implemented. We have also produced or compiled various other documents.

After you submitted your report on the situation of contract workers, we were told by DRPG (at that time) to learn from your report.  After a lot of gymnastics of RTI’s and further appeals, we were finally able to obtain a copy of your report.  While on some issues we at Citizens Forum may be of different opinion, by and large we agree with many recommendations and believe that implementing them will be a good start.  Above all, we agree with the spirit of your report which recognizes these workers as human beings who contribute in a significant manner to the daily functioning of the Institute.

We are shocked that the Institute has summarily rejected the report claiming that ‘implementing it will not be in the best interests of the Institute’.  We believe that the workers provide their labour in the ‘best interest of the Institute’, hence they should be treated fairly, with dignity and with a proper grievance redressal system to address the arbitrary nature of hiring/firing practices of contractors.

Recently, thru help of volunteers, we were able to gather information on the situation of Mess workers. These documents prove some of the points made by you in your report and also what we have been saying to the administration for many years. This document is available at https://sites.google.com/site/iitkcfdevelopment/case-studies/punishments-and-dismissals/2013-09-07. There are many other documents on this web site and we invite you to check them out.  It illustrates the work we have been pursuing for dignity and human rights of workers.

We plan to write to alumni at large, informing them of your report and encouraging them to express their opinions to us as well as writing to the administration asking it to implement your recommendations.

We are wondering if you would like to join us in this effort of sharing the information as widely as possible in an effort to hold the Institute accountable in matters related to contract workers.

Sincerely yours,

Sushil Handa

On behalf of Citizens’Forum