Secunderabad Cantonment stinks as 500 sanitation staff go on strike

SECUNDERABAD: With nearly 500 contract workers launching an indefinite strike on Wednesday over non-payment of salaries for the last few months, Secunderabad Cantonment turned into a stinking pile as roads were littered with heaps of garbage.
Lanes, bylanes, streets and alleys reeked of stench as the workers refused to lift the garbage and other waste materials. Their protest began at Picket Garden at 6 am and continued till 5 pm.“All the 500 workers, including 350 sweepers, took part in the strike. We will continue the stir till the SCB clears the salary arrears,” warned president of SCB contract workers’ union M Narasimha.
While the SCB top brass claimed that the salaries haven’t been paid in the last couple of months, Narasimha cried foul saying wages have not been paid for the past six months.
Close to 150 metric tonnes of garbage gets lifted from eight civilian wards every day. “The workers’ strike has left an impact on sanitation in the Cantonment. No sweeping nor lifting of garbage has been taken up,” senior sanitary inspector M Devender told TOI.
On the salary row, he passed the buck to contractors. “They hire the workers and pay the wages. The contractors should take the blame,” he said. He, however, agreed that the board issues salary bills by 5th of every month, but this month’s payment was delayed due to some reasons.
Narasimha said they resorted to the indefinite stir as their pleas to clear the pending salary bills had fallen on the deaf ears of the authorities. “The salary bills have been held back in the last six months. Our workers staged protests twice but in vain,” he said. He said they had planned to undertake the indefinite strike last month itself, but postponed it owing to President Ram Nath Kovind’s visit.
Meanwhile, residents are bearing the brunt already. “Waste materials and debris are piling up in our colony, raising a stink,” B Ramachandra Reddy, a resident of Bowenpally, told TOI. Sweeping had totally halted right from Bolarum to Rasoolpura and Mahendra Hills to Bowenpally, he said.
Thankfully, in some of the residential colonies, residential welfare associations (RWAs) took the initiative of clearing the garbage by deploying tricycles and shifting them to SCB garbage lifting points on their own.