The politics over garbage has come to a full circle once again. Among other things, the deadlock between the Kejriwal Government and the Municipal Corporation over disbursement of funds has brought the civic services to a grinding halt. With nearly 1.5 lakh employees including 57,000 disgruntled sanitation workers on strike demanding due payment of their salaries and arrears, it seems like Delhi will not be able to breathe easy any time soon. The fresh release of Rs551-crore loan by the Delhi Government and Rs300 crore by lieutenant- Governor Najeeb Jung will bring the municipal corporations back to the square one.
At the outset are the demands of payment of due salaries in the first week of every month, release of arrears for those whose services were regularised in 2003 and 2004, regularisation of contractual workers, issuance of medical cards and the payment of their child education allowance. While the demands have not been complied with, the sanitation workers are battling grave financial crisis.
According to the rule book, if an MCD contractual worker has 240 days’ attendance for three years, s/he should be considered a permanent employee of the civic agency. The MCD, however, violated the norms and regularised the services of those appointed in 1996 later in 2003 and 2004. Not only this, the workers face health hazards at work when they are exposed to toxic gases inside sewer lines due to which they have demanded cashless medical facilities.
“The karamcharis are under deep financial crisis. There are so many of us who were forced to take loans as MCD had not paid for months. The Kejriwal Government had promised us due payment of salaries but everything went down the drain,” said Rajendra Mewati, General Secretary of United MCD Front.
The workers have also not been provided uniforms for the past 20 years. As per the rule, every worker is supposed to get Rs17,000 per year for uniforms of their children but that too have not been provided.
The Delhi Government, however, rejected the MCDs’ claims that the Government owes global share to the MCD, Deputy CM Manish Sisodia said the money released by the AAP Government till date is much more than what was released to them during the same period last year.