A Stinking Issue? Pending Salary Force Pourakarmikas to Stop Garbage Pickup
Mangaluru: If its stinking out there in the city, it’s because for the past two days, the civic workers of the private company named Antony Waste Handling Cell Pvt Ltd handling solid waste for the Mangaluru City Corporation stayed away from collecting solid waste on a door-to-door basis. The reason they are demanding direct credit of salary to their bank accounts, and in the meantime garbage in houses, apartments and public bins had piled up in the city since Wednesday. However, the workers swept the roads and streets, according to MCC health officials.
The workers were mainly demanding that the civic body should directly credit salary to their bank accounts. The corporation has awarded the contract of collection and transportation of solid waste to Antony Waste Handling Cell Pvt. Ltd. As the workers struck work, public bins on roadsides and bins in apartments were overflowing with garbage by evening and garbage kept by people near their gates remained not lifted. MCC Mayor Kavita Sanil speaking to media had said that it was an issue between the company and its workers and the people have been made to suffer, and that she would call for a meeting to resolve the issue on Thursday or Friday.
This is not the first time that the employees of this waste handling company had issues with getting paid salary in time- as per a driver of the garbage truck, he said there had been about 28 protests since two years relating to salary issues- and nothing much has been done in preventing such issues happening again. It is learnt that are 623 civic workers in addition to the 130 drivers employed by Antony Waste Handling Company. Even though the workers have been paid salary till May, the salary for June has been released to the company by MCC which, in turn, should have pass it on to all their workers- but it seems like it has not been done. The salary for July has not been released to the company by MCC, reveal sources from MCC.
Regarding workers demand, one of the MCC official had said that the corporation has not been able to credit the salary directly to the bank accounts as all workers have not furnished their Aadhaar numbers required for the bank transfer. In addition, there was an issue relating to recording the attendance of workers. As the workers kept changing their place of work from ward to ward on a daily basis, it had become difficult to record their individual names. Hence, they have been instructed to work in a given ward permanently from this month as it would become easy to record attendance with names. Manual attendance was being taken from this month for counting the days of work individually, since it will be easy to credit the salary directly to their bank accounts in future. It is also learnt that Biometric attendance system would be introduced shortly, and the workers were also being issued identity cards now. Earlier, the attendance was based on total head count.
The waste handling workers were very reluctant to get back to work if their demands were not meant, but the interference of police authorities from Kavoor Police Station had convinced these workers to get back to work this morning from 10 am onwards, according to a worker speaking to Team Mangalorean. Susheela (name changed) with tears in her eyes said,” It looks like we are working for free. Since two months we have not been paid. I have two kids, my husband is sick and has been bedridden for weeks-how am I suppose to take care of them without salary. Our company has been fooling us with promises and assurances. MCC Mayor and MCC officials have to come up with a proper solution to this ongoing salary issue which has happened quite a few times”.
Raghava (name changed), a garbage truck driver expressing his unhappiness said, ” This truck that I have been driving has gone from bad to worse. Waste water and garbage particles are leaking/dropping onto to the streets from the openings in the truck. I had informed the concerned persons about this many a times, but all in vain, no one has taken any action to fix the problems. Even the truck tyres are worn out, never know when they will burst since we haul heavy load sometimes. Today is indeed a bad since we have to clear the two days garbage. God only knows when our salary and other problems are rectified by our employer. Both our company and MCC are playing blame games, and in the middle we the employees are the sufferers. Kindly highlight our problems in your media so that quick action is taken to end our ongoing issues”.
Sheshappa (name changed) a tempo driver with AWH said, ” I have been with company for nearly 2 years, since it started its operation.But as far as I can remember we have protested nearly 27 times in order to get our salary. Many a times only after our protests we were able to get paid. That’s not right. We work hard and many a times over-time- but if we don’t get paid in time, our faith in the company is lost.”. In general, employees of such companies not only lose their jobs, but are often left in the dust. However, one thing should be clear – employees must be paid by any means whatsoever. When it comes to companies in this predicament, they have to scramble – whatever they can do, but take care of their employees and their wages first, and not put them in hardship- which may lead them into protest, resulting in citizens to face the stinky smell of the garbage that is piled outside their houses/apartments or businesses.
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