High Court favours employment of widow of temporary worker

SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

Empathising with the widow of a temporary municipality employee who died before his services could be regularised, the Madras High Court Bench here has directed the Commissioner of Paramakudi Municipality in Ramanathapuram district to sympathetically consider her plea for accommodating her in some temporary post as expeditiously as possible and communicate the decision to her.

A Division Bench of Justices M. Sathyanarayanan and J. Nisha Banu passed the order while dismissing a writ appeal preferred by the widow J.K. Shanthi challenging the refusal of a single judge to direct the Commissioner of Municipal Administration and that of the Municipality to disburse the terminal benefits due to her husband who had served as Pump Operator, in a temporary post, in the local body since August 16, 1989.

The Bench held that the single judge had rightly refused to issue such a direction since the petitioner’s husband J.R. Kannan had died on January 29, 2006 even before his services were regularised by the State Government on the basis of a proposal forwarded to it by the municipality. They also pointed out that he had lost the chance of regularisation by a whisker since other similarly placed employees got regularised on February 23, 2006.

On October 5, 2006, the petitioner made an application to the Commissioner of Municipal Administration seeking compassionate employment and on March 22, 2007 a petition was submitted to the Commissioner of Paramakudi Municipality demanding the terminal benefits due to her husband. Both the requests were rejected on the ground that those benefits could be accorded only with respect to permanent employees and not temporary staff.