30 years on, Chennai Port apprentices seek Governor's intervention for jobs

CHENNAI: Ninety-four former apprentices of the Chennai Port Authority have sought the Tamil Nadu Governor's intervention to secure employment after waiting for appointments for over three decades.

Despite the port reporting 227 vacancies in its Mechanical Department, a Union government recommendation to consider their appointment, and a recent Madras High Court direction on their representation, nothing has materialised so far.

The representation, submitted by the VOC Port of Chennai General Workers Union, follows the Governor's recent appeal inviting the public to meet him with grievances. Calling him the Centre's representative in the State, the petitioners urged him to take up the matter with the Union government and help secure appointments for the remaining apprentices.

The former apprentices underwent three years of apprenticeship between 1991 and 1994 and, despite being trainees, performed the work of regular employees in the port's Mechanical Department. The union said they were orally assured absorption into service after training, but no appointment orders followed.

When they sought employment repeatedly, the port allegedly cited the Union government's decision to discontinue direct recruitment. The apprentices argue this doesn't hold up, since they completed training in 1994, while the recruitment restriction took effect only in 2001. They contend the port had nearly seven years to appoint them before the policy came in, but failed to do so.

The case has gained fresh traction after the concerned Union department's Secretary recommended the port examine their request, following the port's own admission to the ministry that 227 sanctioned Mechanical Department posts remain vacant.

The former apprentices also moved the Madras High Court seeking appointment against these vacancies. In WP No 2222 of 2026, the court directed the port to consider their representation.

The demand is part of a long-running dispute involving apprentices trained at Chennai Port in the early 1990s and the absence of a uniform recruitment policy for apprentices across Union government establishments.

Under the Apprentices Act, 1961, employers had no obligation to provide employment after training. The Act's 2014 amendment directed employers to frame recruitment policies for in-house trained apprentices, but did not make employment mandatory or extend automatically to those trained earlier.

In 2019, the staff side of the Joint Consultative Machinery, the forum representing Central government employees, urged the Department of Personnel and Training to issue uniform guidelines for implementing the amended law, noting that many establishments had not framed such policies. It recommended recruiting former apprentices batch-wise by seniority, without written examinations.