The caller broke down in tears as she described how she queued three times to use one of only two toilets provided for 200 garment employees at the spinning mill where she works in Chennai.

Her turn never came, forcing the factory worker to use a corner of the mill where waste cotton is discarded.

Humiliated and angry, the worker decided to share her daily ordeal at the mill with a local radio phone-in show. Listeners included labour unions and factory managers and work has now begun to add more toilets at the mill.

Workers’ voice

Three radio stations, which are free and broadcast through mobile phones, have been set up across Tamil Nadu over the last year and now give a voice to the thousands of garment workers whose plight has long been ignored by manufacturers and brands.

Operating in the regions of Dindigul, Chennai and Tirupur, they attract more than 200 callers per day and have quickly become a huge hit among the State’s garment workers. Callers into the shows discuss harassment, long working hours, poor wages and other working conditions.

Many of the factories and mills in Tamil Nadu, the largest hub in India’s $40 billion-a-year textile and garment industry, operate informally with poor regulation, and provide few formal grievance mechanisms for workers, union leaders say.

“What they cannot openly say for fear of losing their jobs, they say here,” said Thivyarakhini Sesuraj, president of the all-women Tamilnadu Textile and Common Labour Union (TTCU), which runs the Voice of TTCU station in Dindigul.

Supported by technology company Gram Vaani, the Voice of Tirupur station hit the airwaves last week — making it the third interactive platform available to the more than one million workers employed in Tamil Nadu.

Run in collaboration with garment workers’ unions like TTCU, Garment and Fashion Workers Union, and Penn Thozhilalargal Sangam, these channels help track and find solutions to grievances, labour rights campaigners say.

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