Delhi Minister for Urban Development Satyendra Jain on Thursday directed the department's Principal Secretary and the director of local bodies to issue instruction to the three municipal commissioners to regularise the services of contractual sanitation workers of the BJP-ruled civic bodies.
The development came a day after the Delhi Assembly passed a resolution asking the North, South and East Delhi Municipal Corporations (NMC, SDMC and EDMC) to make the sanitation workers permanent.
Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had directed Jain to issue necessary directions in this regard. “It is hereby instructed the immediate directions be issued to the Commissioners of all the three municipal corporations... That action be initiated for regularisation of services of all sanitation workers engaged by them,” Jain said in his written instruction to UD Principal Secretary and director of local bodies.
Kejriwal also alleged that the States like Gujarat and Haryana that are being ruled by Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) hired workers on contract only because that party did not want to have permanent employees.
Barring the SDMC, both NMC and EDMC have been cash-strapped. The three were formed following trifurcation of the erstwhile Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) in 2012.
Jayender Dabas, leader of the House in the BJP-led NDMC, said, “We are ready to implement the regularisation of the contractual sanitation employees, but we do not have funds. If the Delhi Government is willing to provide funds, we are ready.”
According to a senior civic official, there are about a total of 25,000 sanitation employees each in NMC and the SDMC. “In NMC, about 20,000-22,000 of them are regular,” he said. In EDMC, there are 15,000 sanitation workers, out of which 12,000, are regular and rest contractual, he said.
He further said that the contractual employees get a lesser salary than that of the permanent workers though they do the same work and same hours.
It may be noted that contractual sanitation workers have been on strike for number of days, demanding regularisation of their jobs. Some of them even fasting for 15 days at the Civic Centre.