Chennai: Tamil Nadu’s prohibition and excise minister K Vignesh, announced a sweeping overhaul of wages for contract workers at Tasmac liquor shops on Monday — nearly doubling their pay, offering festival advances, uniform allowances and a fixed weekly day off — while warning to fire employees who continue overcharging customers.
The hike, implemented from Aug, took the salaries of supervisors to ₹22,313 from ₹17,850. Now, effective Sept 1, supervisors will draw ₹33,023 a month. Assistant salesmen salaries will go up to ₹28,680, from ₹14,340 before the hike and ₹17,925 after the first hike. Of the 22,877 workers, 6,473 are supervisors, 14,379 are salesmen and 2,025 are assistant salesmen. The increases will cost the state an additional Rs 486.90 crore, Vignesh said. “The overcharging started with ₹2 a bottle when workers drew a salary of ₹2,000. Vignesh said Tasmac had previously only fined workers for overcharging up to ₹9 a bottle. Going forward, he warned, collecting even ₹1 above MRP will result in suspension for up to three months, and a second offense will mean dismissal. The minister also announced a festival advance of ₹20,000 for all workers and an annual allowance of ₹6,000 for three sets of uniforms. Shops will receive maintenance grants of ₹5,000 in corporations, ₹4,000 in municipalities and ₹3,000 elsewhere, he said.
The minister said the raises were an effort to end a decades-old practice of overcharging customers above the maximum retail price. “The MRP violation has existed for nearly 23 years,” he told the assembly. Instead, they were encouraged to fleece buyers,” he said.
Successive govts did not make any effort to curb the practice. Workers will also get a weekly day off, two days of casual leave a month and an eight-hour duty schedule.
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