Centre to phase out lakhpati workers of FCI; to bring in contractual labourers

NEW DELHI: After the Supreme Court showed strong disapproval of Food Corporation of India departmental labourers drawing lakhs of rupees as monthly salary, the Centre said it has decided to reintroduce contractual labourers in FCI's 63 depots, godowns and railheads.

On January 9, the SC had said there was something "seriously wrong" with the FCI where 370 departmental labourers were paid Rs 4.5 lakh a month, a salary that was much more than the President of India.

On Friday, solicitor general Ranjit Kumar informed a bench of Chief Justice T S Thakur and Justices A M Khanwilkar and Dhananjaya Chandrachud that the Centre has issued a notification on July 6 to revert to contractual labourers for loading and unloading of foodgrain sacks at FCI depots.
Contractual labourers were abolished from FCI depots from 1970. This means it would be introduced again after 46 years. Kumar also said that the government would gradually phase out departmental labourers.

The court had referred to a report of the high-level committee which said that the Rs 1,800 crore salary bill for labourers in FCI was unacceptable. The committee also pointed out that apart from these 370, there were other departmental labourers who earned a monthly average salary of Rs 80,000 and that in contrast, the contractual labourers doing the same job earned Rs 10,000 per month.

Appearing for FCI, advocate Vikas Singh Jangra informed the court that the average cost per month per worker in the corporation was nearly Rs 80,000. The bench had asked - "They are just loading and unloading sacks of foodgrain. How are they getting paid so much when the contractual labour for the same job gets paid Rs 10,000. This means there must be many who must be subletting the work to contractual labourers and drawing salary without doing anything."

The court's guess turned out to be true as it was admitted by the government that those drawing salaries in lakhs had actually engaged contractual labourers. Since salaries could not be paid to the contractual labourers, the departmental labourer who engaged them was collecting the entire money for their behalf showing erroneously that a single departmental labourer was drawing hefty salary, advocate for FCI workers Union Amit Sibal told SC.

On the basis of a November 15, 2014 story in TOI narrating these facts, the Bombay high court had taken suo motu cognisance of the 'loot' that was going on in FCI and passed several directions, including, reducing the mind-boggling incentive scheme prevalent in FCI; making the labourers job transferable, abolition of depots and abolish the system of departmental labourers in phases.

Sibal said that the government's decision to abolish departmental labourers has not followed the procedure laid down and was done only on the basis of apprehensions expressed by the SC and the HC. The court told him that the workers union could challenge the government's decision separately.

Insiders at FCI and experts say the practice is well entrenched. Often, well paid loaders hire workers for Rs 7,000-8,000 to do their work.