Appeal for Volunteers for Minimum Wage Monitoring

Background:

The statutorily prescribed minimum wage is a basic right of every worker as per
the law of the land and the responsibility of ensuring this has been entrusted 
to the 'principal employer', that is the contracting authority. IITK is thus the
'principal employer' of the entire contingent workforce on campus that is a 
result of the Institute's sub-contracting of work in various areas of 
construction and civil maintenance, security, sanitation, horticulture, even 
research assistance and office help.  When a survey conducted by students in 
1999 found that almost no contractor on campus was paying the Minimum Wage, 
the Institute, in Nov. 2000, formed the Minimum Wage Monitoring Committee (MWMC)
to address this issue. 

Since then, the MWMC has attempted to establish a system of monitoring 
contractors' actual wage payments by working out an appropriate and formal 
format for recording attendance, advance payments, and monthly wage payments. 
Then, in response to the perceived need for a specific location to be assigned
for the disbursement of wages, the Institute, in February 2004, designated an 
office near the MT section for wage/ advance disbursement by all 
contractors/sub-contractors and also ordered that the payment to the contractors
be made only if they are issued a certificate of payment from the wage office.
This Wage Office is open daily, excluding Sundays and Institute holidays, 
from 4-6 p.m. An increasing number of contractors have been making all their 
payments at this Office. 

Future Plans and the Need for Volunteers:

An important aspect of the MWMC and its functioning, all this while, has been 
the support it has received from an informal group - consisting of faculty, 
students, staff and other members of the IITK community. At this juncture, it 
seems critical that the scope of this monitoring be expanded as there are
multiple tasks at hand like: 
1. Ensuring payment of wages in the wage office by all contractors
2. Ensuring the identity of the workers. In this regard there are plans to keep
photo identification records of every worker.
3. Ensuring that a worker's rights are protected if s/he lodges a complaint 
against the contractor.
4. Ensuring that once full payment is made, the money is not taken back by 
anybody. In this regard there are plans for payments to be made by cheque 
instead of cash.
5. Random monitoring of attendance by the MWMC; there are plans that every 
worker is given an attendance card and attendance is also kept in parallel by 
the users/ Institute authorities. 
6. Automating some of the information systems and record keeping.

Clearly each of the activities can be taken further only if there are sufficient
numbers of volunteers from various sections of the community. In our opinion, 
even the contribution of a few hours per week by individual volunteers can make
a significant impact on taking the task of the MWMC further. 

If you are interested in joining this effort, please contact any of the 
following individuals either on phone or through email:
Pankaj Jain, 7663, 8518, pkjain@iitk.ac.in
Rahul Varman, 7970, 8753, rahulv@iitk.ac.in
Shobha Madan, 7402, 8502, madan@iitk.ac.in
Suchitra Mathur, 7836, 8234, suchitra@iitk.ac.in
Harish Karnick, 7601, 8545, hk@iitk.ac.in
AP Gonade, 7224, 8463, anilp@iitk.ac.in
Mohd. Shakeel, 7289, 8361, shakeel@iitk.ac.in
Shailendra Pathak, spathak@iitk.ac.in
                                                                                                                                                                    

You can find more information about MWMC at: www.cse.iitk.ac.in/~hk/mwmc. 
We look forward to your support in continuing this important activity on campus.

Sincerely,

MWMC volunteers