BHUBANESWAR: Four middle-aged women, looking quite frail and worn out, are seen running from pillar to post in Odisha capital Bhubaneswar with hope of reinstatement in their Pachika (cook) job. The women were shunted out from their jobs in August this year for an unintended gaffe they made while cooking food for over 500 students of Gothagaon High School under Shergad block in Odisha’s Ganjam district.
The inadvertent blunder the women committed is that they mistakenly carried spices such as ginger and chilli meant for making a curry paste in vegetable bowl for grinding in a mixer-grinder. While one of the women was on her way to the kitchen to grind the spices in a mixer-grinder, the school teachers found that the bowl was filled with uncooked potato slices. They accused the women of unethically adding potato slices with spices to make curry paste so as to save some quantity of spices to take them home. They were immediately branded as thieves and dismissed for their jobs.
“In August this year, after cutting vegetables and making all arrangements for preparing the midday meal for over 500 students, one of our cooks went to the kitchen to grind the spices to make a curry paste. As she was in a hurry following a warning by local electricity authorities that there shall be a power outage at 11 am, she carried the spices on a vegetable bowl instead of the spice bowl. The teachers charged her with stealing spices and tagged us as her accomplices. We were branded as dishonest persons and dismissed. They didn’t pay any heed to our pleading that all we did was in the interest of the students,’ said Bishnu Pradhan, one of the four retrenched pachikas, on Friday.
The other three dismissed pachikas are Juli Parida, Jayanti Biswal and Gita Swain.
A panchika gets a paltry Rs 1,400 a month as her remuneration. It implies that she gets Rs 46.66 a day. The Union government bears 60 per cent of pachika’s remuneration while the state government provides the remaining 40 per cent.
“Since it is a Centre and state government sponsored job, we hope Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik will intervene and restore our job,” pleaded the women.
