With more sanitation workers joining ongoing strike, Delhi to witness a dirty Diwali

The national Capital's Diwali-eve sanitation crisis, sparked by over 11,000 east Delhi civic workers being on strike from October 11, is all set to get messier.

Encouraged by their doggedness in obtaining pending salaries, bonuses and arrears worth over Rs 800 crore, their colleagues from the north and south municipal corporations will join the protest from Monday.

The development emerged a day after a Delhi High Court bench led by acting chief justice Gita Mittal directed the city government to clear the arrears and backdated overdue pay hikes of east MCD's sanitation workers from the year 2003 by Monday.

The standing counsel agreed in the court, but it is unclear how the AAP government will fulfill this commitment and arrange Rs 800 crore over the weekend.

EDMC deputy commissioner Atik Ahmad said, "The ball is in the Delhi government's court now. They will have to see what can be done. We are going to receive an advance tax share payment of Rs 108 crore from them by Monday, hopefully. With this, we will clear their Diwali bonus demands. Salaries have already been paid. But arrears are huge and it's not possible for the EDMC to clear it on its own."

A senior officer of the municipal corporation blamed the agency's past political and bureaucratic leadership.

"The regularisation of many thousand safai karmacharis was done before trifurcation. They had asked to be made permanent from that date," he said. "But the leaders, on an appeasement spree, decided to regularise them from a back date, without thinking how much of a financial burden it would create on the corporation," he added.

The arrears of the sanitation staff in north MCD amount to Rs 600 crore, lesser than EDMC though it has more such workers, as fewer people were regularised here. The south MCD, on the other hand, has cleared all of its salaries, pension and Diwali bonus. Sanitation workers here are demanding cashless medical cards.

On the crisis in her corporation, north MCD mayor Preeti Aggarwal said, "I am yet to figure out what can be done. I have called for a meeting on the subject tomorrow, i.e, Sunday, as well. We are trying to find a middle ground so that the justifiable demands of safai workers can be met, and at the same time we don't have to give away Rs 600 crore at one time."

She also claimed that the AAPled Delhi government owes the corporation Rs 1,616 crore of tax shares based on the fourth finance commission's recommendations. "I have already met chief minister Arvind Kejriwal once, two months back, over the issue, and am constantly writing emails to him. If we don't get this amount, I am ready to sit on dharna outside his residence," she said.

The total 80,000 sanitation staff of the three MCDs forms the backbone of the corporations as its main job is to lift garbage, clear colony drains, sweep roads and maintain hygiene in the city.

The workers have already gone on strike eight times in the past two years, the biggest of which was in January 2017 when streets from Laxmi Nagar to Mayur Vihar to Seemapuri remained littered with filth for days.

Sanjeev Java, president of the Swatantra Mazdoor Sanyukt Morcha, said, "We are poor people. How long do we carry the burden of our organisation's poor financial health? We have been hearing that the north and east are cash-strapped for years. Why don't they at least merge east and south zone, if not completely unify the three, to overcome this crisis?"

In total, at least 30 safai workers' unions have threatened to come together to protest and strike from October 16.