Safai workers to go on strike from today

Rajinder Nagarkoti

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 23

The city is all set to face sanitation problems as the MC Safai Karamchari Union, Chandigarh, has decided to go on strike from tomorrow.

As the UT Administration and the Municipal Corporation have “failed” to fulfil their long-pending demands, despite an assurance given by the UT Home Secretary in January this year, the union has decided that it will not allow garbage-lifting vehicles to enter the garbage-dumping ground in Dadu Majra.

Union president Krishan Kumar Chadha said there were around 150 garbage-collection vehicles and union members would not allow these vehicles to enter the dumping ground. Besides, all 4,000 safai karamcharis (regular and contractual) will also stop cleaning city roads and lifting of garbage in the coming days, he said.

The key demands of the union are regularisation of the services of 134 sanitation workers, employment of family members of deceased workers on compassionate grounds, and promotion of literate sanitation workers to posts of clerk. This is not the first time that the union will go on strike. In January this year, the union had protested for six days and had stopped lifting of garbage. Besides, in December last year, union members had gheraoed the MC office in Sector 17. They had stopped garbage collection in September last year over the same demands.