The September 23, 2012 promise of KCR to regularise 20,000 contract workers in the GHMC is yet to be fulfilled

Hyderabad: Will the condition of the real heroes of Swachh Hyderabad, the municipal workers, whom Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao compared with gods and saluted them ever improve? This is the million-dollar question being asked by nearly 19,000 contract labourers working under the GHMC limits. Lalitha (name changed on request) wonders if the authorities who would be using new tubs and would be holding fresh brooms wearing gloves and masks as the shutterbugs click the photographs as they attempt to clean the debris do something to improve the condition of the workers.

The sanitation labourers work without any proper equipment and are exposed even to accidents while cleaning the roads during late night hours, she bemoans. A GHMC union leader, on the condition of anonymity, said that KCR had declared on September 23, 2012, that when he would come to power he would regularize 20,000 contract workers but the promise was yet to be fulfilled.

A sanitation worker gets Rs 7,200 per month in hand, where as a construction worker gets Rs 500 per day. Political leaders and celebrities participate in Swachh Bharat mission to make India clean but they tend to neglect the pathetic conditions of daily workers, the workers feel. The union leaders claim that city’s sanitation workers continue to work without safety equipment, spend a quarter of their income on medical treatment.

Though the GHMC claims that they have schemes tailored for the contract workers they have no information about it. Even the labour has to enter manholes though it is prohibited, the union leaders add. But the GHMC claims that it has provided additional group personal accident policy to contract employees like drivers and labour working on outsourcing basis under various agencies.

By:Ramu Sarma