Nagpur: Door-to-door garbage lifting remained affected for the third consecutive day in the five zones following a strike by workers of BVG India after it sacked 113 employees.
Nagpur Municipal Corporation’s solid waste management department deployed 500 sanitary workers and used 13 tippers for door-to-door garbage collection in Gandhibagh, Satranjipura, Lakadganj, Ashi Nagar and Mangalwari zones. Employees of BVG India — one of the firms entrusted with lifting garbage in the city — are on strike for the past three days. They are seeking reinstatement of 113 sacked employees.
Due to the strike, heaps of garbage could be seen scattered across streets and lanes, turning many localities in the five zones into a stinking dumping ground.
Stench emanating from the garbage dumps is turning out to be a health hazard for the general public in these zones.
BVG employees gheraoed municipal commissioner Radhakrishnan B on Monday. Youth Congress activists, who are backing the agitated BVG employees, organized a sit-in in front of the NMC’s new administrative building. Later, Sadar police detained the agitating activists.
Senior corporators, including Congress’s Praful Gudadhe and Manoj Sangole and independent Abha Pande met the civic chief and sought his intervention to end the stir. They urged him to direct BVG to reinstate the sacked employees. The civic chief, however, turned down their demand. He clarified that the civic body is not the principal employer and that it is concerned only with the door-to-door lifting of garbage from the designated five zones.
Earlier in the day, the civic chief also convened a meeting with the representative of BVG India and warned of action if door-to-door garbage collection work does not resume on Tuesday morning.
“The BVG India representative claimed that they will resume door-to-door garbage collection from Tuesday morning,” said deputy municipal commissioner Dr Pradip Dasarwar, he added that the SWM department is ready with plan B which is to deploy its own sanitary workers and machinery to continue door-to-door garbage collection. It started the exercise on Sunday.