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Chandigarh garbage collectors go on strike
The collectors held a protest at the material recovery facility (MRF) in Sector 25 on Saturday from 8 am onwards. The protesting workers are demanding better wages, including a salary hike, citing an increase in workload.
The city grappled with a major sanitation crisis on Saturday as door-to-door garbage collectors went on strike, leaving residents burdened with uncollected waste and overflowing bins. With Sunday already being a non-working day for collectors, the situation is expected to worsen, causing significant inconvenience to households and raising concerns about public health.
Soon after the strike, municipal commissioner Amit Kumar scheduled a meeting with the collectors on December 26, to listen to their demands.
The collectors held a protest at the material recovery facility (MRF) in Sector 25 on Saturday from 8 am onwards. The protesting workers are demanding better wages, including a salary hike, citing an increase in workload. “According to the memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the municipal corporation (MC), we were initially tasked with garbage collection only from residential areas. However, their responsibilities were expanded last year to include commercial areas, without any corresponding salary revision. We also demand revised MoU with staff-friendly provisions, which has been pending for a long time. The lack of updated terms and fair compensation has made their working conditions unsustainable,” said Dharamvir Rana, president of the door-to-door garbage collection union.
Rana added, “If a solution is not found in the meeting on December 26, then we will be forced to resort to go on strike again. The entire responsibility for this will be of the administration.”
Service launched in 2020
In 2020, the civic body had launched systematic door-to-door garbage collection services in residential areas using compartmentalised vehicles and trained drivers. Currently, the corporation provides waste collection services to 2,41,164 households (100% households) in the city, and the waste is collected in segregated form of dry waste, wet waste, sanitary waste, domestic hazardous waste, and plastic waste.
Accordingly, MC had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with as many as 926 door to door garbage collectors individually, from January 1, 2021 to December 12, 2022. The said MoU was time and again extended as the terms and conditions were under review by the officials. MC is working on drafting a new MoU, to be signed with collectors individually.
