DTF members condole death of woman mid-day meal worker

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, April 15

The district unit of Democratic Teachers Front, Punjab, today expressed condolence over the death of a mid-day meal workers, Manjit Kaur, in Ludhiana from burn injuries sustained during cooking mid-day meal at her assigned school. DTF general secretary Gurbinder Singh Khaira said that the state government must give mid-day meal workers in the state their due in terms of wages and health insurance.

“The mid-day meal sisters, who prepare meals for a large number of students in government schools are serving the students without any government security system, safety kits or any safety assurance. Moreover, the demand for health insurance that they have been raising since years now, have been delayed in implementation. This recent death at a school in Machiwara Kham, Ludhiana, due to burns while preparing lunch for the students should be a wake-up call for the government,” he said.

Ashwani Awasthi, district unit head of DTF, said that even after repeated demands and meetings by the state government for cooks, no safety kits, no uniforms, no health facilities, no life insurance, no minimum wages law has been implemented. Among the demands of the employees, there has been a stalemate between the organisation and the government, mainly on the issues of implementation of 37 different types of allowances, irregular dearness allowance, ACP scheme, old pension restoration scheme etc.

Referring to another such incidents in recent years, Awasthi said that another mid-day meal worker, Ranjit Kaur, suffered serious injuries when the pressure cooker burst while cooking in Phulpur Grewal’s primary school at Rupnagar but survived. In this regard, the leaders made all the cooks aware and appealed that special attention should be paid to safety rules while cooking, such as cleaning the cooker properly, cleaning the gas from time to time, inspecting the pipe etc. so that in future, such painful accidents can be avoided.

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