Sanitation workers' stir adds to woes of people in Patna

PATNA: With sanitation workers not collecting garbage from the households, secondary garbage points and roadsides for the last eight days, several colonies and residential areas are staring at a major health and sanitation crisis in the city.
Roads continued to remain littered with garbage on Saturday as the regular workers were not able to cover the entire city even in two shifts.
Over 40,000 sanitation workers attached to Bihar Local Bodies Samyukt Sangarsh Morcha and Bihar Rajya Sthai Nikay Karmchari Mahasangh are on an indefinite strike in the state since last Saturday in support of their 11-point charter of demands.
A delegation of group D employees' associations held a meeting with senior officials of the state urban development and housing department (UDHD) on Saturday, but to no avail. UDHD principal secretary Anand Kishor, Patna Municipal Corporation (PMC) commissioner Animesh Parashar and additional commissioner Sheila Irani were present at the meeting.
The striking workers are demanding regularization of daily wagers and equal pay for equal work for contractual workers. Morcha's president Chandra Prakash Singh said the meeting proved futile as the department was not ready to fulfill their demands.
"We have even proposed that if the government is not ready to regularize the daily-wage workers, it should at least pay wages to contractual workers on par with permanent employees. But the officials did not agree to it," he added.
Shyamlal, incharge of Mahasangh, said the meeting went on for more than two hours but remained inconclusive. "After the Patna high court's intervention, we agreed to hold discussions with the government, but its anti-worker attitude has failed to end the impasse. We have decided to continue the strike," he added.
Due to the ongoing strike, the residents are facing a harrowing time. The brief spell of rain complicated the situation on Saturday as the unattended garbage started stinking.
Ramesh Kumar Gupta, a resident of Rajiv Nagar, said, "We have no other option but to throw the garbage on roadside. The door-to-door collection is not happening and we are forced to throw the garbage in the open areas. Rain has turned the situation worse for people living in the area," he added.
Meanwhile, the PMC said the cleaning work was being carried out in two shifts with the help of machines.
"Waste collection is being done. However, the protesting workers are trying to make the city dirty. An FIR has been registered against 4 named and many unknown people in Patliputra circle for disrupting the cleaning work and assaulting the regular sanitation workers. An FIR was also registered against a worker in Kankarbagh circle," a PMC official said.
"Night sweepers were beaten up in Patliputra circle and one of them was injured," he added.
The municipal commissioner said a helpline number - 155304 - has been made operational for the residents. "People can register their complaints on this number," he added.