NEW DELHI: Over 5,000 Multi Tasking Staff (MTS) employees have been on strike outside the Civic Centre for 11 days, demanding equal pay for equal work — a demand backed by senior AAP leader and MP Sanjay Singh, who, along with several party MLAs and councillors, met the protesting workers on Thursday.
Coming down hard on the BJP, Sanjay Singh said the party has defied even the Supreme Court’s order on equal pay, exposing a government whose “four engines have completely broken down.” He said that during the AAP government, the L-G would object to every single issue, but today, when MTS employees are sitting under the scorching sun for 11 days, the L-G is missing in action. CM Rekha Gupta has no time to meet the employees, while MCD Mayor Raja Iqbal Singh sits comfortably in his air-conditioned office, he added.
On Wednesday, Rekha Gupta refused to meet the employees. These workers, Singh said, risked their lives during Covid to serve Delhi and carried out sanitisation across the city. “Today they are fighting for equal pay, and the BJP government must fulfil their legitimate demands,” he said.
He added, “It was the AAP that secured MTS status for these employees in the MCD. Even the SC has ruled in favour of equal pay for equal work. The AAP worked for them and continues to stand firmly by their side in this fight. The BJP’s so-called four-engine government has completely broken down, and the only way to fix it is through struggle, protest, and relentless fight.”
Meanwhile, MCD LoP Ankush Narang said, “It has been 11 days since these employees went on strike, yet BJP Mayor Raja Iqbal Singh and Standing Committee Chairperson Satya Sharma have neither accepted their demands nor visited the protest site. Friday marks Karva Chauth, but in 5,200 families of these workers, there is only despair today.”