A week ago, the Malabar Devaswom Board Employees Union, affiliated to the Centre for Indian Trade Unions and a feeder organisation of the ruling CPI-M, started a protest against the Board's delay in implementing the pay revision. Even though the Kerala Temple Employees Coordination Committee has been protesting for the same cause for several months, the union joining the cause shows the extent of despair the employees felt.
The story so far
The Malabar Devaswom Board has a story of an unending struggle by the employees for around 30 years. Unlike the Travancore Devaswom Board that governs the temples in the southern districts and the Kochi Devaswom Board that manages the temples in central Kerala, the Malabar Devaswom Board, which is responsible for around 1,500 temples in the northern districts, is rather new.
