It was a black Diwali for East Delhi Municipal Corporation sanitation workers this year as thousands of workers have not been paid salaries for the past six months, let alone other demands. The corporation, however, is claiming to have disbursed salaries of all safai karamcharis.
“We haven’t celebrated Diwali this year. We couldn’t. We had no money to buy clothes or crackers for our children. There was no Diwali for us this year. We were promised that our salaries would be disbursed before the festival but all those promises went down the drain,” said Dinesh, a sanitation worker.
The safai karamchari unions had urged the MCD to serve their demands last month. The three mayors promised disbursement of salaries, but that remains only on paper. “Since we have no hope from the MCD, now we have turned to higher authorities. We are meeting BJP MPs and trying to chalk out a way,” said Ram Gopal, another sanitation worker.
At the outset are the demands of timely 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.
“The karamcharis are under deep financial crisis than one can imagine. There are so many of us who were forced to take loans as MCD had not paid them for months over. The Kejriwal Government had promised us due payment of salaries but everything went down the drain and none of the promises were fulfiled,” said Rajendra Mewati, president of Akhil Bharatiya Mazdoor Congress.
“While the state of sanitation in the Capital is already quite pitiable, what lies beneath is a story of unpaid labourers overshadowed by shallow promises,” said an official in South Delhi Municipal Corporation.