The National Green Tribunal on Thursday ordered the Delhi government to pay East Delhi Municipal Corporation workers their dues without any further “delay or default”, PTI reported. The staffers continued held protests outside the corporation’s office as their agitation entered its eighth day.
The tribunal said the public was inconvenienced in the tussle between the Aam Aadmi Party government and the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Municipal Corporation of Delhi, ANI reported. It demanded detailed reports from the MCD and state government over budget allocations for the staffers’ salaries by Friday.
A protestor told ANI that they had not received their salaries for the past three months. “How will we survive? We are not able to feed our children,” he said. The workers said they would continue their protest till their demands were met.
On Tuesday, around 30,000 North Delhi Municipal Corporation workers began their protest against unpaid salaries. The National Green Tribunal had issued notices to the central and Delhi governments as well as the Sanitation Workers’ Union and summoned them on Wednesday. Some workers dumped heaps of garbage outside the office of Delhi Assembly Speaker Ram Niwas Goel and in other locations in the city on Wednesday.
While Delhi’s Bharatiya Janata Party chief Manoj Tiwari asked Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal to announce a special package for civic workers, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia said the only solution to this long-standing problem was change of power. “Remove BJP [from MCD]”, he said, according to Hindustan Times.
The BJP has been in power in the MCDs for more than a decade now. The strike comes ahead of the civic polls in April-May.
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