Civic body in a meet with workers’ unions will later decide if motor loaders are labourers or not
Finally, there is respite for Mumbaikars as around 4,000 conservancy workers who had gone on flash strike since Friday decided to return to work after an intervention from the standing committee chairman of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). Now, during the next meeting scheduled for next week, both the civic administration and workers’ representatives will present their wants and opinions to decide whether motor loaders are labourers or not.
The civic administration said that motor loaders (persons who load garbage into a vehicle) are labourers and therefore, they can be assigned with door-to-door waste collection. However, conservancy worker unions claimed that that the civic administration is changing their nature of job to fetch benefits for private contractors.
Conservancy workers, both working as permanent and on contract basis, had gone on flash strike since Friday across 24 civic wards, leaving garbage piled up across the city streets. They demanded to scrap all exclusive contracts given to a single contractor for collection, transportation and disposal of garbage in three civic wards.
As a pilot project, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) appointed a single contractor for collection, transportation and disposal of garbage in R Central (Borivali), R South (Kandivali) and R North (Dahisar) areas wherein the private contractor will provide its own vehicle, labourers and garbage bins from collection to disposal of garbage.
However, this step did not go well with BMC’s own conservancy workers as they claimed that they would lose their job. Around 376 motor loaders were involved in garbage lifting in these three wards. After giving all pieces of work to a private contarctor, they are not being asked to collect waste from houses. But, these motor loaders allege that door-to-door collection is a labouer’s job and they are not supposed to do it.
Prafulla Lata, a senior member of the Municipal Mazdoor Union alleged, “The civic body will give away all work to private contractors and the conservancy workers will lose their jobs in the coming years.”
However, the strike left many areas like Kandivali, Dahisar, Borivali, Parel, Andheri, Bandra, Matunga, Ghatkopar with piled up garbage. Nikhil Desai, a resident of Matunga said, “Garbage near Don Bosco School in Matunga and near Aurora theatre Matunga, Dadar Parsee colony was lying unattended till evening.”
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