Sanitation workers call off strike, warn of protests again if demands not met

Gurgaon: The protesting MCG sanitation workers on Thursday called off their two-week strike after a late-night meeting with urban local bodies minister Vipul Goel in Chandigarh, bringing the city’s mounting garbage issue to a temporary end.

The workers’ union said the agitation was suspended till June 30 after the state govt assured them that their long-pending demands would be addressed. However, union leaders warned that the strike would resume from July 1 if no concrete action was taken.

“We held a meeting with minister Vipul Goel and senior ULB officials at Haryana Niwas on Wednesday night. He assured us that our 17-point charter of demands would be considered and implemented. Based on these assurances, we have decided to suspend the strike till June 30,” said Basant Kumar, president of the Gurgaon unit of the municipal workers’ union.

The workers have been demanding regularisation of contractual employees, reinstatement of retrenched workers, withdrawal of punitive action during protests, better wages, safety equipment and an end to the contractual hiring system. Similar protests over these demands have erupted repeatedly in Gurgaon over the past few years, with workers alleging that successive assurances by authorities were never fully implemented.

The sanitation workers went on strike on May 1 after talks with state officials failed to produce a breakthrough. Since then, sweeping of roads, garbage lifting and waste clearance from roads and vacant plots remained suspended, leading to piles of waste accumulating in several parts of the city. During the last two weeks, residents across sectors complained of foul smell, overflowing garbage dumping points and deteriorating hygiene conditions.

MCG officials have also deployed private sanitation agencies to manage waste collection and sweeping through outsourced sanitation workers, but residents said the arrangements were inadequate. The agitating workers in the past two weeks also obstructed the outsourced staff from collecting waste, disrupting the city’s sanitation operations.