Sanitation workers employed by urban local bodies in Bhopal called off their strike late on Friday night after their representatives met Chief Minister Mohan Yadav, ending an agitation that had left the Madhya Pradesh capital strewn with uncollected waste through Dhanteras. Clearance work began the same night, with district officials headed by Collector Priyank Mishra joining the workers to clear accumulated waste, starting at Number 10 Market.
The strike had begun on November 4, a day after a sit-in at Shahjahan Park, and halted collection across 21 zones and 85 wards. Accounts differed on its status during Friday: one described an indefinite action still running into a second day of disruption, while the account of the settlement said it had ended by Friday night. Talks with Sanjay Dubey, the state's Additional Chief Secretary for Urban Development and Housing, had earlier ended without a resolution.
Close to 15,000 of the corporation's nearly 18,000 employees had joined, including about 14,000 daily-wage and 1,000 outsourced workers, according to one account. Union office-bearers said clerical and computer staff as well as employees handling water, fire, building permissions, electricity and horticulture had joined too; municipal sources put non-sanitation staff on strike in the city at about 6,000.
Bhopal generates roughly 800-850 tonnes of waste a day, rising towards 1,000 tonnes around Diwali in one estimate. More than 2,500 tonnes reportedly went uncollected across three days, and more than 400 vehicles, which usually ferry waste two or three times a day to 17 transfer points, stayed parked.
The unions are pressing for a monthly wage of Rs 25,000, against the Rs 10,500 now paid to those hired on a 25-day basis. Vasi Sultan, state secretary of the Akhil Bharatiya Safai Mazdoor Trade Union, said a worker earning that sum cannot run a household; he put the number of such employees at about 7,000. The unions also want jobs regularised, compassionate appointments and an end to contract hiring.
Maganlal Jhanjhot, the union's state president, said the agitation had spread well beyond sanitation work and had warned earlier that it would become a "fight to the finish". Employees claimed more than one lakh workers were off work across Madhya Pradesh. The breakthrough followed intervention by Krishna Gaur, a two-time BJP MLA and minister of state.
Residents in several colonies said they had waited nearly a week for collection vans, and some reportedly burned waste to clean up their surroundings. Tanker water supply was reportedly stopped on Friday, though officials said the city's 2.30 lakh tap connections were not badly affected because valves had been opened in several areas. In Shivpuri, about 350 municipal council employees are on strike, and in Sironj town of Vidisha district, local BJP MLA Umakant Sharma took up a broom.
(With inputs from media reports)