The deadlock between the Kejriwal Government and Municipal Corporation over disbursement of funds has left safai karamcharis at the receiving end. And therefore, with 57,000 disgruntled sanitation workers going on strike demanding due payment of their salaries and arrears, it seems like Delhi will not be able to breathe easy any time soon. Among other things, what lies beneath is an issue of political clash between the two Governments.
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.
“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, president of Akhil Bharatiya Mazdoor Congress.
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 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.
Keeping in mind the health hazards the garbage pile ups can pose to Delhiites, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Wednesday asked the civic bodies to remove the solid waste within two days and directed the Delhi Government to extend its support to them. “We will dump garbage on the streets and this time it will be even worse than expected. It is a fight between the Delhi Government and the Centre where sanitation workers are at the receiving end,” said Mewati.
Rejecting the claims that the Delhi 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. DDA owes a huge sum of amount to all the three corporations in terms of property tax which should be taken from them.
City reaches tipping pointIJ
The municipal solid waste management in the national Capital has gone down the drain. With 65,000 thousand sanitation workers, 1,500 dhalaos, 500 trucks and thousands of auto-dippers, the three civic agencies have miserably failed to improve sanitation services.
Poor monitoring of garbage lifting by private agencies, unavailability of landfill sites and excessive delay in completing solid waste management plants have cost Delhi dearly. While the daily waste generation is rising manifold, municipal corporations have not been able to chalk out a strategy to deal with the daily dumps.
Of the three existing landfill sites, the Ghazipur landfill site is the oldest that came up in 1984. This caters to the waste generated in East and North-East Delhi, Old Delhi, Paharganj zone and the entire New Delhi areas. The landfill site at Bhalaswa caters to the North, North-West, Central and West Delhi areas, while the Okhla landfill site receives municipal waste from areas in South, South-East and South-West Delhi.
As per the statistics, Delhi generates around 8,000 metric tonnes of municipal solid waste daily. This sum is expected to go up by 20,000 metric tonnes by 2021. SDMC generates 3,000 metric tonnes of solid waste, NMC 2,800 metric tonnes and EDMC generates 2,200 metric tonnes. Moreover, the three landfill sites at Ghazipur, Okhla and Bhalaswa are virtually choked and MCDs are struggling to find an alternative to these existing ones. According to Delhi Master Plan 2021, Delhi requires 1,500 acres of land for landfill sites, sources in MCD say that at least 600 acres of land is easily required for a new landfill site.
The Delhi High Court had asked the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) to hand over the land at Sultanpur Dabas Village and Mandi village to NMC and SDMC. The EDMC has identified a land at Sonia Vihar for dumping garbage. However there is an uncertainty lingering over when the possession of these sites to the corporations will be carried out.