10k NMC employees on strike from today

Nagpur: Various services, including spraying of insecticides, collection of property tax and sanctioning of building plans, provided by the Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) will be affected from Tuesday as nearly 10,000 civic employees have announced a strike beginning on March 14 to press for their various demands, including increase in conveyance allowance, release of sixth and seventh pay commission arrears’ among others.
The strike poses a significant challenge for the municipal corporation as it prepares for the upcoming two-day C20, a part of the G20 summit on March 20-21.
President of Rashtriya Nagpur Corporation Employees’ Association (INTUC) Surendra Tingne claimed that all clerical and technical staff from 10 zonal offices will not work.
However, sanitary workers and health staff deployed at NMC’s clinics, hospitals, primary health centres, and workforce from NMC’s fire and emergency services department will not participate in the strike, said Tingne.
Besides this, water supply to the city will not be affected as it is operated by Orange City Water Limited.
Tingne pointed out that the civic body and Maharashtra government have funds to spend for the G20 summit but they don’t have money for their employees who are putting in efforts to provide various government and civic services to the taxpayers.
Citing examples, Tingne said that the NMC is spending almost Rs 200 crore for the C20 summit but it has no money when it comes to paying NMC employees’ arrears of the sixth and seventh pay commissions.
“The government should provide financial assistance to civic bodies like the NMC to pay arrears of both the seventh and sixth pay commissions to its employees’ he said.
Recommendations of the 7th pay commission are to be implemented for the NMC employees too. Municipal corporations in Mumbai and Pune have already implemented most of the recommendations of seventh pay commission like revision in conveyance allowance. But the NMC only revised the salaries ignoring other facilities to its employees, he said.
Citing an example, Tingne said NMC employees are getting Rs 450 as transport allowance, while it was Rs 2,700 per month as recommended by the 7th pay commission.
According to him, the new pension scheme should not be implemented. He also demanded minimum wage implementation for contractual workers and they should be given preference while filling up vacant posts.
He further demanded that the government abolish appointments on compassionate grounds in the civic body and that the retirement age should be increased to 60 years from the existing 58. The union also demanded that the government should make sanitary workers who have completed 20 years of service permanent. If there are no posts, then it should create posts, the union pointed out.