BHUBANESWAR: Hundreds of sanitation workers on Monday gheraoed the headquarters of Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) at Janpath road alleging work overload and other issues.
They alleged that the civic body, from December 1 last year, introduced six mechanical sweeping machines in the city while increasing the road network coverage by street sweeping from 345-lane km to 715-lane km. While only 80 km of roads and 345 km of lanes were being covered through mechanical sweeping earlier, the BMC increased it to 166 km of roads and 715 km of lanes.
As just 200 sanitation workers are engaged to support the mechanical sweeping of roads and streets, the addition of road and lane length has imposed a heavy work burden on them.
“Against a less-than-one-km stretch, each sanitation worker is now being asked to collect waste from dividers on a 1.5 km stretch at the time of mechanical sweeping, that too carrying a bin with him/her,” alleged a sanitation staff.
The sanitation workers demanded deployment of adequate manpower to handle the increasing workload. BMC Safei Mazdoor Sangh leader Akshay Routray said the civic body has agreed to survey the stretches and take adequate measures to address the concerns of the workers. He, however, said the workers will intensify protest if their grievance is not addressed.