Delhi Congress said that sanitation workers in Delhi were facing severe exploitation at the hands of the Delhi Government, Municipal Corporation of Delhi, PWD, Delhi Jal Board and the Forest Department, and due to shortage of the sanitation staff, the existing workers were overburdened with work as these Government agencies have not employed new hands in place of those who have retired or expired while on duty.

Addressing a press conference at the DPCC office, Rajiv Bhawan here today, ex-MLAs and senior Congress leaders Shri Jai Kishan and Shri Veern Singh Dhingan said that sanitation workers were being exploited and overburdened with work without getting rewarded for their hard work. He said that Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal betrayed the ad hoc and daily wage sanitation workers with the false promise of regularization, but he has not bothered to fulfil his promise, leaving the poor sanitation workers in the lurch. They said that instead of putting an end to contract work, AAP people were being given the contract for sanitation work, which in turn leads to severe exploitation of the sanitation workers.

Shri Jai Kishan said that not a single ad hoc sanitation worker has been regularized in the past 9 years, exposing the hollow promise of Kejriwal. He said that the BJP and AAP Governments have suppressed the rights of Dalits in Delhi, who are being exploited as never before.

Shri Jai Kishan said that for the past two months, the Delhi Government and the Municipal Corporation of Delhi have been disbursing the salaries of the sanitation workers on time to make political capital out of it, in view of the coming elections. He said that with the regularization of 300 workers, the Delhi Government was giving out the false impression that it was regularizing the services of all temporary workers, which was far from the truth. He said that taking a cue from Dr Baba Saheb Ambedkar’s decision to create a special place for Dalits in the Constitution for their upliftment, the Congress Government implemented many schemes for the welfare and progress of the Dalit community, giving them employment opportunities in every department of the Government, and that practice has been stopped by the BJP and AAP Governments. He said that for the past many years, no sanitation worker has been regularized, nor any new appointment made.

Shri Veer Singh Dhingan said that the sanitation workers in Delhi were overburdened with work as the Delhi Government and the MCD have not made fresh recruitments though thousands of sanitation workers have retired. He said that there was a shortage of at least 50,000 sanitation workers in Delhi, and because of that, Delhi’s sanitation work has been severely impacted. He said that since 1990, the MCD has not made any new recruitment of sanitation workers though thousands of sanitation workers have either retired or died on duty, and 300-400 vacancies of sanitation workers occur every month in the MCD alone.

Shri Veer Singh Dhingan said that Kejriwal had promised to provide cashless medical card to the sanitation workers, but he has not fulfilled his promise till now. He said that the sanitation workers work in extremely risky conditions and as a result, they are afflicted with various ailments, but the Government does not bother neither about their health, nor their jobs and welfare. He said that many sanitation workers succumbed while on duty during the Covid pandemic, but the families of such poor workers got no compensation from the Delhi Government, though Kejriwal had announced Rs 1crore compensation to those who died on duty.