Motorists fumed as traffic crawled on the Vikas Marg and other east Delhi roads on Friday morning as salary-demanding sanitation worker of the BJP-run civic agency littered garbage in public spaces.
The workers did this as a token protest near colony of Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia’s house.
The jams started around 10 am and caused pile-ups on all roads linked to Laxmi Nagar, Preet Vihar, Karkardoom, Patparganj and National Highway 24 going towards Ghaziabad.
“I was caught up in the grid lock for two hours in the morning. The situation lasted for over three hours,” said Anirudh Sharma, a private firm employee who was coming to work in the capital from Vaishali.
The nearly 100 sanitation workers, who formed about a dozen groups, emptied their mini-garbage vans on roads and littered trash on roads, in colonies and near community bins in the area to protest the non-payment of their salaries by the civic agency.
The BJP ruled East Delhi corporation blames the AAP government’s “denial” of financial aid to the cash-strapped civic body for its failure to pay salary to sanitation workers.
Sisodia said the government was not going to yield to unfair demands of the “corruption-riddled” civic agencies.
“They are trying to spread the dirt of corruption,” he told reporters.
An agitating sanitation worker said if the salary money was not released by the Delhi government they would protest right outside Sisodia’s home in Patparganj.
Garbage cleared
“Today we just held the protest near his colony,” said a sanitation workers’ union leader, adding that the garbage littered by them was later cleared by their colleagues.
On Thursday, over 120 councillors of the three BJP-led corporations – North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC), South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC), and East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC) – including senior party leaders marched to the Raj Niwas from Chandi Ram Akhara shouting slogans seeking the release of funds by the Delhi government for the civic agencies.
Delhi Police, however, said that only 10 to 15 people were involved in the protest and had brought garbage in hand carts.
“They were demonstrating at Laxmi Nagar and Nirman Vihar traffic signal. Due to this, traffic was heavy in the carriageway from Laxmi Nagar towards ITO.
Motorists were told to avoid Vikas Marg and use National Highway-24,” said a police officer.
