Sanitation Strike Hits Day 21, Extended Till 30 August

GURUGRAM: Contractual sanitation and fire workers stretched their citywide strike into a 21st day on Wednesday, marched from the old municipal corporation office to the Mini Secretariat, and then announced that the stir — due to end on 26 August — will now run till 30 August.

Hundreds of workers handed a memorandum addressed to Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini through Sub-Divisional Magistrate Hitender Sharma. The Nagar Palika Karamchari Sangh (Haryana) and the Fire Department Employees Union warned that if the government still does not issue orders on a 13 May agreement, the agitation will become an indefinite statewide strike across civic bodies.

Union leaders say that agreement covered 17 points: regularisation of about 13,000 contractual municipal workers and 1,175 fire personnel; an end to private outsourcing of sanitation and sewerage; reinstatement of 3,480 retrenched sanitation workers in Gurugram; a monthly risk allowance of Rs 5,000; uniform and medical cover; and a Rs 5 lakh retirement gratuity for eligible contractual staff. Basant Kumar, state vice-president of the Nagar Palika Karamchari Sangh, alleged that successive administrations have avoided permanent recruitment and left the workforce with contractors.

On the ground, the rain has turned uncollected waste into a public-health argument. Sector 40 RWA president Abhimanyu Yadav said 100-square-yard plots in the sector now command upwards of Rs 3 crore, yet garbage has sat along internal roads and vacant plots for weeks. "The entire sector is choking on garbage," he said, warning that MCG would not contain a dengue spread if the mess continued. He wants sanitation funds and management handed to the RWA. Residents also say the sector's sanctioned strength is 21 sanitation workers, with only 14 contractual staff — a supervisor and 13 sweepers — assigned, and that proxy attendance thins that number further.

Tej Pal, a contractual supervisor who said he oversees 13 workers in Sector 40, told reporters the team did not want to inconvenience the public. "Currently, we earn just Rs 18,000-Rs 19,000 a month. In a city like Gurgaon, it is impossible to raise children, pay rent, and run a household on these wages. We only want our jobs regularised, basic dignity, and wages so we can return to work and serve the city."

In Uppal Southend, RWA president Col (retd) Surender Yadav said residents have been spending about Rs 2 lakh a month since last year to hire a private agency. Vinita Sinha, RWA president of Sushant Lok A and A1 blocks, said residents had hired their own sweepers and that open plots had not been cleaned since the strike. She claimed the gap predated the walkout: 30 workers are supposed to report, "even before the strike, hardly a dozen would." Bhawani Shankar Tripathy, a Sector 23A resident, called the area a "stinking mess" and said complaints to jurisdictional engineers had not changed the picture.

MCG has, in earlier briefings, said private-agency staff were being deployed to cover the gap. RWAs say that cover is thin, especially after rain scattered roadside heaps into drains. The unions' Wednesday deadline has now moved four days. If no government order appears by 30 August, they have said the next step is not another Gurugram march but a statewide stoppage.