The 11 pumping stations across the city will soon change hands, but the fate of their 300 employees hangs in balance, with the Calcutta Municipal Corporation refusing to take them in.

Soon after the Calcutta Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) had set up the 11 pumping stations, it had employed contract labourers to man them. Now, the CMC is ready to take over charge of the pumping stations sans the employees.

?All of us will starve to death if we are forced out. Probably, we will be forgotten, despite the fact that we had worked so hard to get the pumping stations ready and running. Now suddenly there are no takers for us,? lamented Arun Muhuri, chairman of the Ganga Action Plan Contract Workers Cooperative Society Ltd.

?As the state government has not specified who will pay the salaries of the employees, we cannot do anything. We, too, are facing a severe financial crisis,? said mayor Subrata Mukherjee. ?They are all contract labourers and the state government should take a clearer stand on their fate. They had come to me with their grievances. We will take up the matter at the appropriate level,? he added.

In 1993, the CMDA set up the pumping stations in and around the city, including Garden Reach, Behala and Baishnabghata Patuli. The 300-odd contract labourers recruited were paid a salary of Rs 2,000-2,500, depending on their seniority. ?As we did not have a provident fund scheme, we opted for a Life Insurance Corporation of India insurance scheme. But now, we will probably lose all our money,? Muhuri added.

In 1999, state municipal affairs minister Asok Bhattacharya helped the employees set up the cooperative society.

However, the employees soon learnt that the pumping stations will be handed over to the CMC for jurisdiction reasons and a financial crunch. A series of meetings between the state government and the CMC in end-2004 finalised the decision to hand over the pumping stations to CMC.

It was then that the CMC clarified that it did not intend to take in the employees.

Pranabandhu Nag, general secretary of the Development Employees Joint Action Committee, pointed out that in the 1970s, the Calcutta Improvement Trust and the CMDA had handed over several pumping stations, including those in Dhakuria and Garia, to the CMC along with all the employees.

?If they could do it then, why can?t all the employees be accommodated in the CMC now?? he asked.

CMDA chief executive officer P.R. Baviskar held out the assurance that not a single employee would lose his job.

Municipal affairs minister Bhattacharya said: ?I have requested the mayor to consider the matter.?