Patna Wakes up to Stench as Sanitation Workers’ Strike Enters Third Day

Patna: Thousands of Patna Municipal Corporation's (PMC) Grade 4 daily-wage employees including safai karamcharis (sanitation workers) continued their strike on Wednesday. In defiance, the workers threw garbage, rotten fish and dead animals on the roads which lead to the premises of corporation offices and also close to the office of Patna’s mayor.

Today is the third day of the workers’ strike. Meanwhile, tonnes of garbage and filth has piled up at different places in the heart of Bihar’s capital city. The stench is increasingly being felt and has been rising over the past 48 hours after the on-strike PMC’s sanitation workers stopped cleaning work. A group of striking workers dropped garbage in and around Maurya Lok Shopping Complex and the posh Boring Road among other such well-to-do localities as well.

Workers have been protesting against the state government’s decision to remove them instead of regularising their jobs, which had been their demand for a long time. Despite repeated verbal assurances by top government officers, striking Grade 4 daily wagers, including sanitation workers, are adamant that they will not relent till their demands are fulfilled.

“We are on strike and our strike will continue till the government regularises our service. We will not end our protest, rather we will intensify it,” said Nand Kishor Das, the leader of fourth-grade employees.

Since the first day of the strike, which began on Monday, large parts of Patna continued to reek of trash. Garbage and filth could be seen scattered and dumped all around except in some VIP localities. Door-to-door waste and garbage collection in residential localities, market places and offices has totally stopped.

With the city’s streets already showing signs of dirt and filth due to cleaning operations being hit, the PMC is likely to hold a high-level meeting on Wednesday to discuss the fallout of it and may take a decision to pacify the agitating sanitation workers.

Manoj Kumar Chandravansi, Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader, said that the strike had put pressure on the urban development and housing department. The department issued orders putting a stay on an earlier order which sought the removal of 10,000 Group D workers, including sanitation workers from cleaning work.

“It was their strike which forced the government to issue a letter saying that daily wage workers won't be removed till March 31. However, the striking workers are not in the mood to accept it, they want regularisation of service,” he added. CPI(M) has extended support to the striking workers.

According to Ram Yatan Prasad, another leader of the striking workers, the strike will not end till the government withdraws its order to remove daily wage workers and gives them a written assurance that cleaning and sweeping work would not be outsourced.

Different unions of daily wage workers have come together for the strike. “We have been staging protests in front of the office, had gheraoed it and shouted slogans against the government’s anti-worker policies and demanding regularization of jobs. It had been their demand for a long time.”Prasad said.

The agitating workers said that hundreds of them have been working for the last 10 years on a daily-wage basis in the hope that government will regularise their job. The sanitation workers said that they were the real players behind the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan but were mostly left in the lurch.