Chaos ensues on the sets of an OTT project ‘Dharavi Bank’ after art department workers stop work over not getting any dues

The cast and team of a brand new OTT show ‘Dharavi Bank’, which reportedly features Suniel Shetty, Vivek Oberoi, and Sonali Kulkarni, have been left withinside the lurch whilst approximately three hundred setting employees, hired at the set of the show, stopped work for almost 5 hours, as they had not received any payment after running for almost one month. During this time, the sets have been being set up, whilst the shooting had not started yet. It is assumed that the hassle arose because of a postpone in verbal exchange among the art director and the production team.

For perspective, it was in July 2021, that a reasonably famous art director Raju Sapte committed suicide and that changed the way the movie industry carried out business with its art department employees. Earlier, producers used to offer an artwork director’s bills to the cine employees union, which used to forward the cash to the artwork director, who, in turn, might settle the dues of the employees. Since Sapte’s tragic demise, it was decided that the producer might directly pay artwork directors and employees to avoid any delays and make the system transparent. But the decision is not actually working in the favour of any of the parties involved as most of the employees aren’t getting paid on time. One such incident has come to light recently.

General Secretary of Federation of Western India Cine Employees, Ashok Dubey spoke to ETimes and said, “We have been getting frantic calls from our members about non-payment of wages and their calls to reach out to the production and responsible authorities are not being answered by anyone. The workers are really harrowed and don’t know what to do. We got a call about them stopping work on the sets”.

The bills for placing and artwork branch work are being directly paid to the artwork director, who is meant to disburse the wages to the employees of the setting branch. In this case, it is art director Wasik Khan, who’s in charge of the ‘Dharavi Bank’ project. When we reached out to him, he brushed aside the news of the stoppage of work on the sets and said, “There is always a slight delay of payment which is normal in our industry and the workers didn’t stop work at all”. Umesh Shinde, production executive on the project, though, had a contrasting view.

He said, “There is a complete chaos and I have not even received the invoice from the art director to whom the payment has to be made. It is a big amount for which I would need a letter from the art director. All this has resulted in the delay of payments to workers who are getting harassed. I wish we had the option to pay directly to the union. At least, with them, there is a secure place where the payments can be made and then be disbursed to the workers”.

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