Vikram Ditya Sharma/Ferozepur
The strike by sanitation workers over their pending demands entered the third day today, severely affecting cleanliness arrangements in the city and causing inconvenience to residents as heaps of garbage continued to accumulate in several localities.
Members of the Safai Sewak Union staged a protest outside the Municipal Council office and raised slogans against the government and the council administration. Union president Danny and general secretary Ram Charan said the protest would continue until their demands were accepted. They alleged that the provident fund (PF) of sanitation workers in Ferozepur had not been deposited by the council for the past five years.
Former Municipal Council president Ashwani Grover said the sanitation workers were protesting over genuine demands and alleged that instead of resolving the issue, the government had forced the employees to come on roads. He warned that if the demands were not accepted within a week, markets in Ferozepur would be shut in protest.
Due to the strike, garbage collection from houses, hotels, dhabas and shops has come to a halt. Residents complained that waste had not been lifted from their homes for the past two days, resulting in foul smell amid rising temperatures. Housewives Priyanka Galhotra, Rajni, Renu and Anu said they were forced to dump garbage themselves at nearby dumping points.
Former councillor Rajesh Nindi said it was perhaps for the first time that sanitation workers had remained on strike for three consecutive days without any concrete response from the government.
Sanitary Superintendent Sukhpal Singh said sanitation workers were the backbone of the entire system and their demands would be conveyed to the government. He said the shortage of sanitation workers in the city had already been brought to the notice of the authorities.
Notably, the Municipal Council presently has only 68 permanent and 45 contractual sanitation workers against the requirement of more than 350 employees as per the city’s population spread across 33 wards. Ferozepur city has around 25,380 houses and over 4,130 shops and offices spread across nearly 20 square kilometres.
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