Civic staff strike from today

Delhiites may have to face a hard time as the municipal employees including sanitation workers, teachers, doctors and engineers have decided to go on an indefinite strike starting Wednesday.

Their main demands include timely payment of salaries, clearance of arrears and regularisation of contractual employees.

In October, the city saw a similar protest by sanitation workers. Life was thrown out of gear as heaps of garbage got piled up on the roads and the threat of an epidemic kept hovering over the city. This time the situation is more serious with employees from almost all departments of municipal corporations planning to strike work.

Hundreds of employees took out a token march on January 14. Workers’ unions said that employees have been sitting on relay hunger strike at Jantar Mantar for the past couple of weeks.

Though the East Corporation tried to foil the indefinite strike called by the employees of the three municipalities by claiming that it had released the salaries of safai karamcharis on Monday, workers’ unions said that they are all set to stage a protest on Wednesday.

“We will not budge this time. The civic agencies have been fooling us for a long time and denying employees their hard-earned money,” said Rajender Mewati, general secretary, United Front of MCD Employees.

The East Delhi Municipal Corporation claims that the sanitation employees have been given salaries for December. When asked why the civic agency has only released the salaries to safai karamcharis, a senior official said, “The sanitation unions comprise the biggest chunk of the total employees’ unions.”