Garbage piles up as sanitation workers continue their strike

Ongole: The streets and corners of the roads are started to stink as the contract sanitation workers in the urban local bodies in the state continue their protest for fifth day on Monday demanding the scrapping of GO No 279 and regularisation of their services.

But the government, which is stubborn on the continuation of the GO ordered the municipal commissioners to employ temporary staff and book criminal cases against the workers if any of them tries to oppose the temporary workers.

The 1.463 crore urban population in AP resides in 14 municipal corporations, 71 municipalities and 25 nagar panchayats. These 110 urban local bodies generate about 6,440 metric tonnes of waste per day, of which 5,796 metric tonnes waste is being collected by about 21,000 sanitation workers, as per the sanitation strategy by the government. In the 21,000 sanitation workers across the state, only 20 per cent of them are regular employees while the remaining are contract workers.

The contract workers are appointed by the outsourcing agencies, that are responsible for the complete sanitation in their area along with the welfare of workers including salaries and supply of tools and protective gear. As the agencies fail to pay the salaries in time due to the bills pending with the corporations, the workers went into protests many times earlier.

The Government of Andhra Pradesh issued GO No 279 on October 2, introducing real time monitoring system and making some reforms in the existing system. The reforms including the RTMS are opposed by the contract workers, who may lose their employment, for not following the rules and regulations under the GO No 279.

So, the contract workers, who are protesting the introduction of reforms for the last three years, went into strike from October 4. The 1,334 contract workers in Prakasam district also joined the strike along with their counter parts in all other districts.

After five days of continuous protest by the contract workers and non-cleaning of the streets, many roads started to smell foul and the garbage heaps are becoming food source for stray animals.

The secretary of Andhra Pradesh Municipal Workers Union, K Uma Maheswara Rao participated in the protest by the workers at Chirala Municipal Corporation and said the officials and public representatives are threatening them to call off their strike and announced that they will continue the protests until the government scraps the GO No 279. He also demanded the government to fix the salaries of workers as Rs 16,000 and regularise every contract worker.

However, the government is serious on the sudden strike by the contract workers and issued orders to all commissioners of urban local bodies to start sanitation works by recruiting temporary staff. Speaking to The Hans India, Ongole Municipal Commissioner Sankranti Venkata Krishna said the GO No 279 guarantees the welfare of contract and outsourcing workers in many ways and protects them from the removal from service by the agency.

He said as the workers are not listening to the government, they have appointed temporary staff to collect waste from door to door initially. He also said the police have booked cases against few workers as they tried to obstruct the duties of temporary staff. Venkata Krishna announced that they are appointing more staff to clean roads, drainage and shift the garbage from Wednesday by paying Rs 400 per day and will dismiss the present staff eventually.