DICCI may be roped in to provide jobs to labourers

NEW DELHI: Delhi Government is likely to take help from the Dalit Indian Chamber of Commerce & Industry (DICCI) to empower the manual labourers. After banning the manual scavenging, the government is likely to take an initiative to assure the jobs for them. The DICCI is the organisation which made the Hyderabad city manual scavenging free.

"The mechanism of this organisation is implementable. I have discussed our condition and problems with them," said Rajendra Gautam, the Water Minister of Delhi. He met the officials of DICCI on Tuesday morning.

While talking to Millennium Post the minister added, "They have good grassroots connections with the Dalits and most of the manual labourers come from this background." In Hyderabad, they campaigned for the manual scavengers and sensitised them about the ill effects of it. The minister explained that DICCI will provide banking help to the labourers.

Apart from opening bank accounts for the laborers they also finance them to buy machines for cleaning sewerage so that these people can use the machines by themselves instead of going inside the manholes. " Through these initiatives the laborers do the same job but not manually, so their income does not get affected," Gautam asserted.

He also said that when Hyderabad has got a positive response then Delhi will also get that.

"Being the national capital, we should empower the laborers through various initiative and the process of DICCI will give an overall protection to them," he added.

The minister assured that the department and government will think about the proposal of this organisation and decide if they can take help from them.