Sanitation staff take up demands with Amritsar civic body officials

Amritsar, December 2

The Municipal Corporation (MC) sanitation workers, led by Safai Mazdoor Union, are up in arms over their pending demands. They had given a 72-hour notice to the MC Commissioner regarding their demands on Wednesday. Union leaders Vinod Bitta (president), Surinder Tona, Deepak Gill (president of Sewer Workers Union) and Kewal Kumar discussed their demands with Hardeep Singh (MC joint commissioner), Anil Arora (assistant commissioner) and Manu Sharma (deputy controller finance and accounts), in a meeting on Friday.

Though the meeting did not yield any result, the union leaders decided to postpone their strike to Monday.

MC officials said those demands that can be addressed at the MC level would soon be fulfilled, but the demands that need to be cleared by the state government would be presented to the government department concerned.

Bitta said, “We discussed all demands in detail with the Joint Commissioner and corporation officials. The union will not start the strike on Monday, as announced earlier. A meeting will be held with the MC Commissioner next week and further announcement will be made only after that.”

He said the demands of the union have not been met for a long time. The MC Commissioner has been informed about the pending demands. The office-bearers of these unions demand they be issued provident fund (PF) account numbers and PF passbooks, which have not been issued since 2004, they claim. Bitta said that the PF of the employees from 2016 to the current date should be calculated with interest and deposited in their bank accounts. He said the employees don’t have any information about their CPF and PF.

“The government had announced it would hire 576 sanitation workers in the MC at the DC rate. These safai sewaks should be appointed as soon as possible as MC workers are overburdened,” said Vinod Bitta.