Seeking a hike in the wages of sewermen, who work at a meagre salary of ₹9,500 per month, members of Punjab Municipal Corporation Sewermen Employee Union handed over a memorandum to additional deputy commissioner (G) Iqbal Singh Sandhu on Friday.
The union members demanded that the state government should regularise all the contractual sewermen and sweepers who are working amid the Covid-19 pandemic by putting their lives at stake.
Union president Vijay Kumar said, “The labour department still considers sewerman as semi-skilled labour. This is unacceptable and they should be covered under the skilled labour category. Moreover, government should regularise these sewermen who have been working with the municipal corporation (MC) for over a decade.”
“The labour department had hiked the salary of employees working on DC rate wages by ₹420 on May 1, but that notification was rolled back,” he said.
Raising concern over the safety of sweepers and sewermen working in the city, the union demanded that these employees should be provided gloves, masks and hand sanitisers frequently as two sweepers tested positive in Amritsar. The members said that they would be forced to protest in the coming days if the state government does not pay heed to these problems.