Delay in salary payment to MCD employees may witness complete civic shut-down in the city as employee unions from all departments of the BJP-ruled Corporations are all set to go on an indefinite strike from Wednesday.
More than one lakh employees, who are yet to get their three months’ salaries and other dues, have given an ultimatum of two weeks following which halting of services are likely to take place. Earlier, the national Capital has witnessed halting of civic services by sanitation staff over the same issue but this will be the first occasion when other departments have decided to participate.
United Front of MCD employees, a banner which have been representing at least 20 employee associations, have said that the strike will affect the city heavily the MCDs perform majority of key functions from ensuring cleanliness to maintaining birth and death records and running hospitals.
The teachers and doctors were protesting against the constant delay in salaries and now the engineers, horticulture staff, DBC staff, etc have joined them giving the Corporation two week’s notice before stopping work completely.
“We are quite sick of this situation where there is no surety of getting monthly salary. They had promised things would get better by the end of the year but nothing has changed. The situation has reached a point where we must go on a strike if we want to get paid our dues,” said a doctor at a civic hospital, requesting anonymity.
They alleged harassment by the concerned agencies as they have been working without money for over 120 days period. The employees claimed to enjoy support of top officials including Commissioners as they are also not getting their salaries due to money crunch.
“As many as 70,000 employees of all the three civic bodies have not received salaries for the past quarter. Though the city witnessed a sanitation disaster as the safai karamcharis went on strike, thrice last year, the authorities have failed completely to pay heed to their needs. This time teachers, engineers, doctors, para-medical staff, administrative personnel, etc have come under one banner deciding to intensify their strike,” said Rajendra Mewati, general secretary of United Front of MCD staff.
“We are reeling under MCD. We have been promised salaries since so many months but all in vain. The Commissioner also maintained that he would disburse our salaries but nothing has happened as of now.
“We cant continue services this way. We don’t know how manage our expenses. For how long will we take loan from others and live?” said Sanjay Gehlot, president of a union of sanitation staff.