Employees of Ranchi Municipal Corporation have found support of hundreds of contract workers to their agitation. As many as 1,600 contract workers hired to keep city free of garbage have decided to join strike of RMC Karamchari Sangh from January 23 threatening to throw the city into a mess just before two important visits by two union ministers to the capital.
Around 400 employees of the employees union of RMC are on indefinite strike to make the municipal corporation yield to their demands of appointment to 100 people on compassionate grounds and disbursement of pension to retired RMC employee equivalent to retired State Government officials. “We have not been approached by anyone from the administration.
This strike will continue until we get an audience and our demands are fulfilled. Safai karamcharis have agreed to extend their support to our agitation and they are likely to refrain from work to convey their solidarity,” said leader of the association, Naresh Ram. The strike is likely to be joined by additional 400 labourers besides 1,200 contract labourers hired for solid waste management would add to the dissenting voices camped outside municipal corporation’s office.
However, the RMC administration rejected the claim of its regular employees joining the strike of the association from Saturday. The administration attempted to allay fears of poor waste management because of the strike and said garbage cleaning would not suffer.
“Our employees have not joined their strike and the contract labourers are not member of the employee association. So our work will not be affected because of the strike,” said PRO of RMC, Naresh Sinha. Meanwhile, deadlock continued on Friday as the association did not receive any offer of talks and the strike was not called off till the time of writing the report.