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Journalism of Courage
MUMBAI, MARCH 22: Hundreds of workers employed by the Solid Waste Management (SWM) Department of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) on a temporary basis last year for its cleanliness drive have not been paid their salaries for over two months.
The BMC owes more than Rs 90 lakh to these workers. Of the Rs 4.5 crore that had to be paid to them till January this year, the administration has succeeded in clearing only Rs 3.65 crore.
The monthly salary fixed for every worker is Rs 1,500. All the workers are short-listed by local non-governmental organisations, while their salaries are disbursed by the BMC.
Ram Prayag Chitravanshi, chief engineer of SWM department admitted the problem of paying salaries to the temporary workers had arisen due to lack of funds. “We have put up a proposal to theadministration to release additional grants from sundry advances,” he said.
About the need to employ workers without making budgetary provisions, chairman of SWM department Subhash Sawant said: “If we don’t deploy workers, the city’s areas would remain dirty and citizens would blame us for the accumulation of garbage.”
However, nobody is willing to take the responsibility of ensuring that the workers are paid on time. Some SWM department officials said lack of budgetary provisions couldn’t be cited as the main problem, because the demands for garbage disposal workers from various corners of Mumbai were unexpected.
One of the workers, Raju Thate, who works for Sahayta Trust, Bhandup, has not been paid his salary for the last four months. “Sometimes I feel like quitting the job, but where will I find another?” he asked.
In S ward alone, there are 300 workers who haven’t been paid their dues for four months. The ward’s authorities claimed payments for October and November had been cleared, but itwould take some time for the social organisations to receive the money.
Q M Sayyed, area health supervisor, S ward said: “We receive the payment to be made to these workers in advance from the head office, but as there is still no advance for the next two months from the head office, we can’t make further payments to the organisations.”
Many of the workers believe they will be absorbed by the civic corporation as permanent workers. Civic authorities, however, denied giving any such assurance to anybody. Sawant clarified: “These workers have been hired on a temporary basis, and we have not made any promise to give them permanent jobs.”
The numbers of workers have gone up sharply as BMC also provides this service in areas which are outside its jurisdiction.
