TASMAC Staff Face Hidden Costs, Overcharging, and Exploitation: Inside Tamil Nadu’s Liquor Retail Struggles
मुख्य बातें
- •TASMAC employees in Tamil Nadu face systemic exploitation, including unpaid operational costs, unreimbursed expenses, and pressure to overcharge customers by ₹10 above MRP.
- •Workers absorb losses from electricity overruns, high rents, unloading charges, breakage, cleaning, and bottle buy-back staffing—totaling thousands monthly in unofficial outgoings.
- •Despite a 17-fold revenue increase (₹3,000 crore in 2003 to ₹50,000 crore in 2025), TASMAC staff numbers have dropped by 26%, and most remain on contract after decades of service.
- •Government crackdowns on overcharging ignore deeper structural issues, with workers reporting health problems and no welfare provisions amid harsh working conditions.
For 23 years, S. Vijayabaskar has stood behind the counter of a TASMAC outlet in Pudukkottai, enduring long shifts, abusive customers, and the unspoken stigma of working in a state-run liquor monopoly. But it was his eighth-grade son’s recent question—“Can you quit and drive an auto-rickshaw instead?”—that left him speechless. The boy had absorbed the public narrative: social media videos, FIRs, and a new government cracking down on TASMAC employees for charging ₹10 above the maximum retail price (MRP). “They are showing us as though we are the ones looting the money,” Vijayabaskar told *The Hindu*.
