Domestic Breeding Checker Mohan Chand said a new financial burden has been added in the form of tablets that the South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) gave DBCs across the city to feed breeding data.
Mohan Chand (43), a Domestic Breeding Checker (DBC) in Rajouri Garden, earns Rs 14,000 per month. Of the entire sum, he pays Rs 5,000 as rent while the rest is spent on food, education of his children and other expenses.
Maintaining that the salary is never enough to meet the family’s needs, Chand said a new financial burden has been added in the form of tablets that the South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) gave DBCs across the city to feed breeding data.
Last June, the SDMC launched an app, namely Vector-borne Disease Control (VBDC), and distributed among the DBCs 200 tablets so that they can feed the breeding data electronically for senior officials to keep track of it.
“The SIM card given by the corporation does not catch network in most places, so I have to use my own SIM in another slot. It costs me around Rs 500 per month,” he said.
Budhram, president of the Anti-Malaria Ekta Karamchari Union, said, “Besides our other demands such as regularisation of our jobs and medical benefits, we also demand that the corporation allows us to work manually instead of complicating our work or adding financial burden by giving us these tablets.”
Uday Narayan, another DBC, said, “Our supervisors ask us to check 50 houses on a daily basis. When most workers complained of the weak network delaying the work, the supervisors said that we should send the details on the app and write it down manually on the registers as well. This is further delaying our work and hence it is not feasible to cover more than 30 houses per day.”
Stating that he has a debt of Rs 50,000 for which he pays monthly interest, Narayan said, “Last month, the glass screen of my tablet broke. When I went to the service centre, I was told it does not come under warranty. I put my problem forward to my seniors, they asked me to get it fixed with my own money. I had to spend Rs 2,700 on that last month.”
He also said, “DBCs work under dangerous circumstances – we need to climb up rooftops to check for breeding in terrace water tanks. Often, we enter households that have no staircases to reach there. With a tablet in hand, it is even more difficult.”
There have been several cases of DBC workers falling from rooftops too. While some have been seriously injured, a few have even died, he said.
Instead of spending the money on tablets, the corporation should have given us medical benefits, said Manish Paras, another member of the union. He added, “Moreover, the tablets are faulty. The moment I switch off mine, the battery shows 20 per cent despite being fully charged.”
Budhram added that at least 50 of the 200 tablets that had been distributed have stopped working.
Kamaljeet Sehrawat, Mayor of the south corporation, said, “Every technology has some hiccups in the beginning because people are used to older ways of functioning. If there are shortcomings, we will improve it in the coming days. This technology must have helped us in monitoring the work of DBCs since we had less number of mosquito-borne diseases this year.”