While people are busy making preparations for the festival of lights, East Delhi residents have been forced to cope with nauseating stench emanating out of piled up garbage due to a strike by sanitation workers of East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC). Garbage mounds can be seen in colonies such as Patparganj, Kailash Nagar, Ajit Nagar, among other places, as the air filled with foul smell.
Scores of sanitation workers of the East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC), who are demanding payment of their salaries, clearance of arrears and medical cashless card, protested outside the office of Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia as their strike entered its seventh day on Tuesday.
"We dumped garbage in front of his office in Madhi Vihar area and also burnt his effigy. The Delhi High Court has already ticked off the Delhi Government for not ensuring the payment of salaries for the sanitation workers. If authorities do not listen to our demands, we will intensify the stir," said Sanjay Gehlot, president of the MCD Swachhata Karmchari Union.
The Union had on Monday also claimed that sections of workers from north and south civic bodies have also joined the agitation, but the civic bodies had denied it.
Prior to this, the EDMC sanitation workers had protested outside the residence of East Delhi Mayor Neema Bhagat in Geeta Colony and also burnt her effigy.
All three Municipal Corporations are led by the BJP.
The Opposition AAP in the civic bodies had on Monday hit out at the corporations over the issue, even as its leader in the North Delhi Municipal Corporation, Rakesh Kumar, said, "We have urged other workers to not to go on strike till Diwali atleast, as it is not the fault of people of Delhi but of the civic bodies."
The AAP leader said his colleague Vikas Goyal, a councillor and a member of the standing committee of the North DMC, on Monday tried to raise the issue of sanitation, but the standing committee "did not allow" him to do so.
He even sat on the floor of the House in protest, but to no avail, as people in the ruling party in the corporation are "not serious", Kumar alleged.
"We have even asked for a special House session to be convened to discuss it, but it hasn't been heeded. We have been trying to meet the l-G for two months, but have not got any response so far. We are with the workers and if needed will join their protest later," Kumar said.