NEW DELHI: Scores of agitating daily-wage and other irregular sanitation workers of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) on Saturday called off their strike after getting assurances from civic authorities that their demands of regularisation will be met, officials said.
A former mayor of the erstwhile North Delhi Municipal Corporation said these workers had been agitating for the past two days, seeking regularisation and pending salaries among other issues ahead of Diwali.
The move comes ahead of the anticipated civic polls here which are likely to be held at the fag end of 2022 or early next year. Municipal Commissioner Gyanesh Bharti, ex-mayor Jai Prakash, along with other senior social workers had been “assiduously working on the matter and had held marathon meetings for two consecutive days – October 14 and 15 – with representatives of the trade union to avert any difficulty for citizens of Delhi that could be caused due to the strike, while being always mindful to redress the grievances of Swachhta Sainiks”.
“In the process, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi has decided to regularise the substitute or daily wager safai karamcharis of year 1998 and 2000 as well as the substitute or daily wager engaged on compassionate grounds since April 1, 2003,” the civic body said in its statement.
Prakash, when asked how many sanitation workers are set to benefit out of these steps, claimed that “about 10,000 such workers will be benefited in the next few months”. “About 7,500 workers will stand to benefit in the 1998-2000 bracket,” he claimed. Today, offer letters for regularization were distributed to 12 daily wager swachchta sainiks in the presence of Jai Prakash, All Karamchari Union Core Committee president, Engineer-in-Chief P C Meena and other municipal officials, the statement read.