Times of India: Ahmedabad: Saturday, July 28, 2018.
It took a
28-year legal battle for 56-year-old Ashok Rathod to secure his wages for more
than two decades, the period he was made to sit idle by the forest department.
On July 11,
the labour commissioner issued a notification directing that Rathod be paid for
the days he was made to sit out of the job between July 7, 1990 and September
3, 2015. This notification was issued on basis of an order passed by a labour
court on April 24 this year.
Rathod’s
struggle to get back his daily wager job with the forest department has been as
complicated as the case itself.
His services
as a gardener were discontinued in 1990 by the forest department, for the
reason that he did not complete 240 days in service.
Ironically,
his service fell short by just half a day, four hours. The department computed
that he had put in 239.5 days in the job. His services as a gardener at a
nursery at Nana Chiloda were then terminated.
Rathod’s legal
battle then began before a labour court and the Gujarat high court.
“There was no
breakthrough until the government brought the Right to Information Act.
Activists advised me to get details under RTI about the days I had worked for
the forest department. I obtained heaps of documents to establish that I had
served 20 days more than the 239.5 that the department had computed. These 20
days were recorded in a muster, that I used to serve at a Valad nursery between
1981 and 1990,” he said.
The biggest
problem Rathod faced was that he was not hired in the private sector for 25
years. “When they came to know about my case, I was shown the door. Nobody was
ready to hire a person who drags matters to courts. But I was determined to get
my job back,” he said.
After he
found the days in service to go past the missing four-hour stint, he qualified
to be reinstated. The courts ordered the forest department to take him back on
the job in 2014. One year later, he was posted at Atarsumba, where he worked
for seven months. He was later posted at a nursery near Indroda Park in
Gandhinagar. Rathod has been working there, on daily wages, for last three
years, at Rs 304 per day.
Now, with
four years till he retires, Rathod is looking at the possibility that his
services will be regularized.
“I have
completed four years on the job. An employee gets regularized on completion of
five years. Hopefully, I will start getting the full salary from next year,”
Rathod said. Till then, he has to content himself with a meagre Rs 7,904 per
month.
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