At Udumalpet in Tirupur district, more than 500 coconut workers laid siege to the Revenue Divisional Office to protest against migrant workers from Northern states.
Tirupur: In Udumalpet and surrounding areas of Tirupur district, there are thousands of coconut plantation workers engaged in major tasks including peeling of coconuts, breaking coconuts, loading and unloading coconuts in vehicles and extracting the fibre by picking up and ripening the coconut stalks.
In the recent past, since there was a huge influx of migrant workers into Tamil Nadu, local workers became vulnerable to losing jobs as workers from the Northern states were increasingly being employed at lower wages.
The livelihood of the local coconut plantation workers in Tamil Nadu is in question now since agricultural capitalists preferred to employ workers from the Northern states in large numbers at low wages. Therefore, the local workers have implored the Government of Tamil Nadu to take steps to protect the livelihood of the workers of Tamil Nadu.
Their demands included steps to be taken to fix wages, ESI deduction, job security pension, medical insurance for workers engaged in the coconut industry in Tamil Nadu. The protest was staged in front of the Udumalai Revenue Divisional Office, demanding that steps be taken to set up the Coconut Workers' Welfare Board.
More than 500 protesting workers gheraoed Revenue Divisional Officer Jaswant Kannan, who was passing by, and submitted a memorandum of demands. The coconut workers in Udumalpet have also announced that they will go on strike if no action is taken to fulfil their demands.