Letter to the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu regarding the demand for regularization of the ‘temporary’ sanitation workers of Chennai Metro Water Supply and Sewerage Board: *** We the undersigned, are writing to you in support of the demand of the sanitation workers of Chennai Metro Water Supply and Sewerage Board (CMWSSB) related to the regularization of their employment. The workers have been waging a struggle against the monthly contract system and have been demanding permanent status for past several years now. The governments in the past have not acted on their demands. The promise of ‘Governance of a New Dawn’ made by your government had instilled hope in them of getting their long-standing demands accepted, but their experience of the last few months has belied those expectations, and forced them to announce an indefinite strike starting from Monday, May 16, 2022. Sanitation is a regular and continuing function of urban local bodies and hiring of workers for a permanent activity o
Power & Climate Policy Analyst Shankar Sharma's representation to RK Singh, Union Minister for Power and Renewable Energy, with copy to the Chairperson, Vice -Chairperson and Members NITI Aayog, New Delhi: *** May I bring to your kind attention the ongoing enormity of the coal power crisis like situation in the country from the overall welfare perspective of civil society? The attribute to the Union govt., as in the web link here , that the country has constraints in the availability of domestic coal has only corroborated the associated concerns which have been raised by many people and media houses during the last few weeks, even though the officials and ministers refused to acknowledge the same. It is a well acknowledged fact that the ability of the road/rail infrastructure needed to transport coal from mines and seaports to coal power stations has reached a sort of saturation, and the ill-conceived policy of opening scores of new coal mines and coal power plants cannot impro