EMPLOYMENT: Two toilet cleaners in India earn just over $100 for more than 40 years of scrubbing

Akku and Leela Sherigar, both 59, have applied to the Guinness Book of World Records for the lowest salary ever paid. Submitted photo

VANCOUVER DESI

Two cleaning ladies in India are applying to the Guinness Book of World Records for the lowest salary ever paid, according to an article by the U.K.’s Daily Mail.

Astonishingly, Akku and Leela Sherigar claim they’ve only earned $103 each for the more than 40 years they’ve toiled away cleaning toilets in southern India.

The breaks down to an average of about 180 rupees – or $3 – a year.

And for the last 11 years the women say they have worked for free following a dispute with their employer.

The two women, both 59, started working as toilet cleaners for the Government’s Women Teacher’s Training Institute, in South India, in 1971, for 15 rupees (25 cents) a month, the article continues. But they’ve not had a pay rise since, even though they say they’ve never missed a day’s work.

Although angry, the pair say they’ve now applied to the Guinness Book of World Records for the title of the lowest salary in the world.

Akku said: “We were promised a pay rise every year but it never came. We trusted our employers that eventually they’d pay us. We never believed it’d come to this.”

In 2001, the women decided they’d had enough and complained to the Karnataka Administrative Tribunal, in Udupi, near Goa, in southwest India.

Then, their wages stopped altogether with no mention of any reimbursement.

But the women still went into work cleaning 21 toilets, three times a day, seven days a week.

And for the last 11 years, they have worked for free.

Parhar says:

October 30, 2012 at 9:46 am

Of all the village idiots in the world, Camal & JJ stand alone. I mean, these two make them feces-flingin’ monkeys at the zoo look like Stephen Hawking… no, Einstein. See, Camal & JJ are too stupid to know who Hawking is. I’m sure they think that he’s a Hawk trainer or plays for the Blackhawks or hawks goods at a street market. Nope. He’s a smart, smart man. Literally, the polar opposite of you two Punch & Judy men.

Now I’ll address Camal (Idiot 1) first:

I1: On an annual salary of $3, it would take these woman 500 yrs to save enough money to immigrate to Canada. The human lifespan isn’t that long. Humans do something called “aging”, and eventually, they die (or stop existing).

I2: You’re irrelevant. You make I1 look like the aforementioned Einstein. You have no power, no influence, possibly very little money (if your grammar is any indication)… the fact is, you can’t affect change nor dictate immigration policy no matter how many times you times you spit out yer’ tobacco juice, hitch yer thumbs in yer overalls and drawl, “Don’t need no more of them God-hatin’ immigrants to work here, I done git my cuz Cletus to work on them farms.”

pitbull says:

October 30, 2012 at 12:36 pm

dis is what you git for putin out da paper like dis..

ed says:

October 31, 2012 at 10:52 am

i think we missed the point – from what i read – it is the employer that we do not want here – Although these types of conditions do exist here – if you immigrate here and work for people form the old country – you do get screwed – regardless of our laws
leave the business people in India

Camal says:

October 29, 2012 at 8:59 pm

Immigrate to Canada under the temporary foreign worker program or show up and claim refugee status and your automatic a Canadian with all the benefits of full Canadian citizenship.Canadian taxpayers will even pay for you a immigration lawyer and support you and your extended newly Canadian arrived family.