In the race to have ‘Shining’ Delhi in time for the Commonwealth Games 2010, Congress-led Governments in Delhi and at the Centre are riding rough-shod over workers’ rights and safety regulations – and workers are paying with their lives.

Following the collapse of an under-construction bridge on 12 July 2009 at a worksite of the showpiece Delhi Metro project which claimed six lives and injured several, Metro Chief E Sreedharan sought to “reassure” people that such accidents are quite routine in all metro construction sites the world over. Days after that ‘major’ accident, yet another accident took place on a Metro construction site, this time claiming one worker’s life. The DMRC assured the public that this accident was a ‘minor’ one. It seems that the workers who lose their lives on these sites are seen as expendable. As long as the ‘accident’ is not spectacular enough to attract much media attention, a death here and there of faceless, nameless workers can be airily dismissed as ‘minor’ and ‘routine.’

The 12 July incident is not the first time the Delhi Metro project has drawn workers’ blood. Even the similar incident on another Sunday – October 19 last year – when a bridge collapse in east Delhi claimed two lives was not the first time. The media has made some mention of some other random incidents: when a malfunctioning crane at a Metro construction site dropped a beam on a passing car in July 2008 injuring two; when a labourer was killed at a Metro construction site in east Delhi while carrying out burrowing work in January 2008; when a crane driver died after a concrete block fell on him due to a “technical failure” at another Metro construction site in east Delhi in August 2007. Even in the supposedly ‘unblemished’ record of the Phase-I of the Delhi Metro project, over 13 fatal accidents occurred under the main contractor alone - the toll being much higher if the accidents under various sub-contractors were to be accounted for. This was admitted in an internal newsletter by E Sreedharan way back in August 2006, when he referred to the DMRC safety record as ‘dismal.’

An audit of Phase-I by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has observed that Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) had scaled down its testing requirements in four cases, company representatives did not witness the tests in eight cases, and that it tested material in non-accredited laboratories and did not preserve the reports. Worse still, the CAG has claimed that the Union Urban Development Ministry, in an “unprecedented and unconstitutional” move sent the report back to the CAG when it was submitted a year ago, thereby “deliberately” delaying tabling of the report in Parliament.

The DMRC is a habitual violator of labour laws, including those relating to wages and safety. A Metro worker, quoted in the Telegraph, July 16, said he was paid Rs 150 for 12 hours of work. Minimum wage laws require that he be paid Rs 153 for eight hours and double the amount for 12 hours. Another worker said, “There is no way we can raise our voices about safety on the sites. There have been instances when agitating men have been beaten up by the contractor’s goons or even sent to jail.” By refusing to issue ID cards to these labourers, DMRC evades its responsibility to them. The DMRC has avoided providing verifiable data on the toll of workers’ injuries and deaths in the course of the project. A report published last year by a workers’ organisation on the condition of construction workers found that the DMRC, flouting the legally mandated Workmen’s Compensation Act 1923, has been paying compensation according to its own ‘DMRC Labour Welfare Fund Rules’ which has no legal sanction. Another workers’ organization has estimated that more than 200 workers have lost their lives in the DMRC project in the last six years; the DMRC admits to 69. It also found that the DMRC has been flouting the Construction Labour Act, which requires that a joint safety committee of workers and management meet every month to review safety precautions on all sites employing over 500 workers. Workers on most construction sites including DMRC are denied mandatory safety equipment. So much for DMRC’s ‘impeccable’ track record!

This dismal record of labour law violations in the case of construction labourers is nothing new, and is not confined to the DMRC. The Commonwealth Games construction sites tell the same dismal tale (see excerpts from the PUDR report below). Significantly, the DMRC, DDA, etc, in every case of workers’ deaths or violation of laws, blithely wash their hands off blame, holding private contractors and sub-contractors responsible. The labour laws are clear that it is the primary employer who is entirely responsible to ensure that the laws are implemented on worksites. In the capital city of Delhi, private contractors fleece workers and flout laws with impunity in projects while the Government institutions – the primary employers – turn a blind eye. Even the Delhi Building and Other Construction Workers’ Welfare Board (DBOCWWB), constituted under the Department of Labour in 2002 has turned a blind eye to the blatant violations of labour laws and the spate of workers’ deaths at construction sites.

The landmark 1982 Supreme Court verdict in the Asiad workers’ case (People’s Union for Democratic Rights v. Union of India and ORS) had described the non-payment of minimum wages as a form of ‘begar’ or forced labour. It is clear that the icons of ‘national pride’ – the Commonwealth Games site, the Delhi Metro and other allied projects, are being built on the shameful and sinister foundation of forced labour and spilt blood. It is ironic that while the workers toil unseen, underpaid, working in desperately dangerous conditions at frequent cost to their life and limb; it is their bosses like Metro Chief E Sreedharan who are lionized as ‘heroes,’ and it is Shiela Dixit and Manmohan Singh who will bask in the ‘shine’ of the Commonwealth Games.

The workers’ movement and the democratic citizens must confront the Governments at Delhi and the Centre with its blood-stained record and demand justice for the workers. Not only the guilty private contractors, but also those primary employers – the government officials who abdicated their responsibility to ensure that laws were followed on worksites – must face punishment for violations of labour and safety laws.

In the Name of National Pride:

Blatant Violation of Workers’ Rights at the Commonwealth Games Construction Site

(The Government has earmarked a lavish Rs. 5000 crore on the spectacular Commonwealth Games, and the costs are likely to keep going up. But what are the human costs of these Games our governments are playing? An excerpt from a report by the PUDR. For full report see www.pudr.org)

The most disconcerting fact is that the working and living conditions of unorganized construction workers, who are building these stadiums, hotels, residential quarters etc., with their sweat and toil, remain appalling and pathetic. Not paying workers even the minimum wages due to them is a form of begari, a form of feudalism, where the state expropriated labour from the subject population to host spectacles for the pleasure of elites. Sadly, in 21st century India, the state is reproducing the same conditions by letting transnational corporations get their work done at less than minimum wages, unmindful of the safety and welfare of workers. As a result, instead of the state acting as a model employer, it has become complicit in the exploitation of workers by ensuring that workers’ rights do not come in the way of the project which has been termed a symbol of “national prestige”. PUDR’s fact finding at the Commonwealth Games Village site revealed that several provisions under the labour laws—the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976, Minimum Wages Act, 1948, Contract Labour (prohibition and Regulation) Act 1970, the Inter-state Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Condition of Services) Act, 1979, and the Equal Remuneration Act, 1946 and The Buildings and Other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act 1996, among others—are being violated by the employers. As per the Asiad judgment, this amounts to the violation of the fundamental rights guaranteed to all citizens of India under Article 14, 21 and 23 of the Constitution. These workers are working in bondage and it is a huge disgrace for the nation.

…Reports from the workers’ unions and other groups confirm similar violations of labour laws are taking place at the other sites as well. At different sites, the principal employers, that is, the DDA, the MCD, the NDMC, the CPWD, are liable to check violations, but are not doing that. In fact, the government is actively avoiding public scrutiny of the working and living conditions at the site by not allowing unions and civil liberties organization to visit the site and thus colluding with private interests, who seem to be freely operating outside the laws of the country. …

The report also shows how institutions of the state, such as the Labour Department, the Welfare Board, police and other agencies like the DDA have abdicated their responsibility, which is to protect the interests of marginalized labour…

…we are convinced that unless construction workers, including contract labour, are allowed to unionize, no real improvements can be achieved in their living and working conditions.