The Tamil Nadu Teachers-Wardens Welfare Association (TNTWA) has criticised the Adi Dravidar and Tribal Welfare (ADTW) Department’s decision to terminate the employment of at least 75 cooks working in its hostels, mainly on the reason that they were overqualified as they had passed Class X.
The cooks were part of the roughly 800 appointments made in 2020-21 by the department. According to the orders issued regarding their termination, the minimum educational qualification for the post of cook is to be a literate in Tamil. The orders also said the person should not have cleared Class X.
Other reasons cited for the cancellation of some of these appointments included the fact that the appointed candidates hailing from a district other than the one in which the hostels are present, they belonged to communities other than Scheduled Castes or Scheduled Tribes and they were older than the stipulated age. The association alleged that the other reasons mentioned in some of the cases were also not justified according to established rules and different judgments of the Madras High Court.
G. Vivek, general secretary, TNTWA, said the Tamil Nadu Service and Subordinate Rules and orders issued in the past by the ADTW Department made it clear that the minimum qualification of being a literate could not mean that a person should not have completed schooling.
“In this age, when Tamil Nadu is proud of its education system, one cannot expect a person to not complete Class X to be eligible for a job,” he said. “Even though it is not correct, it is understandable to an extent if the person is overqualified with a graduate degree or more. But even those who had just completed Class X have been terminated,” he said.
Pointing out that the terminations were done based on an order issued in May 2020 by the then Commissioner of Adi Dravidar Welfare, he alleged that this order itself was in violation of already established rules.
Interestingly, many staff associations, including the TNTWA, had earlier criticised these 800 appointments made during the previous AIADMK government. They had questioned the alleged haste in which the appointments were made during the pandemic, when there was no need for cooks in hostels as they remained closed.
“Now that the appointments have been made, the department cannot arbitrarily terminate them unless they have strong and justifiable reasons to do so. Moreover, if the appointments were really problematic, why has no action been taken on those responsible for appointing them,” he asked.
‘No violations’
A senior official in the department, who is aware of the issue, clarified that the terminations were done as per existing rules after adequate deliberations.
Acknowledging that there may be a need to question the rationality and relevance of some of these rules, the official, however, said that there were no procedural violations in cancelling these appointments and added that inquiries and disciplinary action were also being taken against officials responsible for these appointments.
