‘Regularisation of EDMC sanitation workers to begin’
NEW DELHI: East Delhi municipal corporation ( EDMC) mayor Bipin Bihari on Sunday said the corporation would initiate the process of regularisation of sanitation workers who had been working on contractual basis since April 1998.
Most roads in east Delhi continued to be littered with garbage as sanitation workers have been on strike for the past 26 days. The sanitation employees have been protesting against the non-payment of their salaries and pending arrears. Their main demands include regular payment of salaries, clearance of dues and regularisation of contractual sanitation workers. There are around 16,000 sanitation workers in the EDMC. One faction of the sanitation workers had resumed work on Saturday after the Delhi government announced to release ₹350 crore to the EDMC for payment of the salaries of the agitating workers.
The EDMC mayor said the decision to regularise sanitation staff was taken after a meeting of officials of the civic body on Sunday. “We have decided to regularise our sanitation workers. It will be done on the basis of seniority. An order in this connection has also been issued. We will give permanent appointment letters to a few sanitation workers on Monday. I appeal to the agitating workers to please return to work,” Bihari said.
An order issued Sunday by the assistant commissioner, department of environment management services of the EDMC said, “It has been decided to regularise services of PSS (Paryavaran Sahayaks, also known as sanita- tion workers) engaged on or after April 1, 1998 immediately. Accordingly, DC Shahdara South and DC Shahdara North are requested to expedite the process and forward respective case files starting with PSS engaged in April 1998, to this headquarter for further action.”
President, MCD Swachhata Karmchari Union Sanjay Gehlot said the strike would continue and a huge protest will be held at Jantar Mantar to press the Central government and the MCDS to consider their demands. “This regularisation-related order holds no authority. The proposal should have been made by the commissioner and then passed properly by the EDMC house. This order is issued by the assistant commissioner instead of the commissioner and hence is nothing but a tactic to fool us. We will not call off our strike,” Gehlot said.
Meanwhile, Delhi Cmarvind Kejriwal and Bharatiya Janata Party’s state unit chief Manoj Tiwari engaged in a twitter war over the issue of release of funds to the corporation.
Tiwari in a tweet said, “… the Delhi government has to transfer ₹10,000 crore fund allocated by the centre to the MCDS. Delhi in 2014 used to get ₹36,776 crore from the centre but now it gets ₹48,000 crore.”
Replying to this, Kejriwal tweeted, “According to our calculation the Centre has given us only ₹325 crore but there is no need to argue. You (Tiwari) tell the Centre to the send these ₹10,000 crore directly to the MCD, there is no need to route it through us. So from now on will there not be any need to send money to MCD from Delhi government?”