Section of staff resort to disruption: Milma’s Thiruvananthapuram Regional Union

Trivandrum / May 14, 2024

Thiruvananthapuram, May 14: A group of employees claiming to be trade unionists had disrupted the promotions interviews at Milma’s regional head office in the city here, which were scheduled for Monday and Tuesday.

This group broke into the office and resorted to violence, claiming that the promotions were not being done on time and that the management was promoting only officers.

Since this morning, without any warning, they resorted to disrupting the dairy operations, which is an essential service. 

Smt. Mani Vishwanath, chairman of the Thiruvananthapuram Regional Co-operative Milk Producers Union (TRCMPU), said that it was painful to see the employees trying to break the MILMA movement when milk production and the dairy sector face several challenges.

She also warned of strict action against those trying to destroy the cooperative movement to protect farmers' interests.

As per the existing recruitment and promotion rules, only three posts to be appointed through by-transfer recruitment are to be decided at the head office level as the promotion committees at the dairy level take the steps for the rest of the promotions.

The Departmental promotion committees have been periodically held at dairy levels and were promoting employees on a regular basis.

At the state level of Milma, after getting clarification from the Managing Director of KCMMF, the problem has been solved so that the promotion to the posts of lab assistant and marketing assistant can be done immediately in a favourable manner to the employees.

While an ITI certificate is required for promotion in the rest of the plant operator posts, some employees, under the guise of trade union members, attempted to stop the interviews, demanding that those who passed Class X be eligible for the said promotion.

The employees' contention that the criteria for promotion beyond the educational qualification, work experience, and ratio set by the government should be decided at the head office level could not be accepted, although the process to sympathetically consider their demands and obtain relaxations in the rules was at the final stage.

Although the chairman and managing director had assured this in the meeting held that morning with the employees' representatives, without stopping the promotion of the officers, they took a tough stance that they were not ready to compromise.

They stopped the interviews, detained the chairman and members of the interview board and later threatened and misbehaved with the women employees at the head office by shouting at them to leave the office. 

Ends