Court relief for staff of night shelters facing axing of jobs by DUSIB

NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court on Tuesday provided relief to the contract labourers of night shelter homes of the national capital against termination from their job by the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board (DUSIB).

Vicky Sharma, Secretary of Delhi Shelter Home Workers Union, said, “According to DUSIB Act 2010 (amended in 2013), apart from the rehabilitation and relocation of slums in Delhi, the shelter homes will be operated through DUSIB. Here, within five years, workers started being recruited according to the tender system, which was given to non-government organizations. The institutions kept changing but the workers remained the same. This year, suddenly the organisations started firing contract workers and told them that their services have been terminated and they should go home”.

Gulfsha, who is associated with the Delhi Shelter Home Workers Union, says that when the minimum wages in Delhi were low, they were given the opportunity to work, the institutions changed but the workers were not evicted. However, today, when the minimum wage rate has increased in Delhi, they are being chased away by calling them contract workers, as this is a grave insult to the workers, she said.

Human rights advocate Kawalpreet Kaur, who is representing the workers union, said that the bench of HC Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav has given relief to the contract workers and the relief will last till March 2024.

Criticising the insensitivity of the Delhi government towards the contract workers, labour rights activist and convenor of the National Campaign Committee for Eradication of Bonded Labor Nirmal Gorana Agni said that the Delhi government itself wants to regularize the contract workers, but in this matter, the Delhi government appeared to be failing and, thus, they will announce a demonstration demanding regularisation of contract workers. 

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