Sanitation workers’ protest in Gandhinagar cross 50 days

The workers have been protesting outside a garden in Sector 12 of Gandhinagar city under the banner of Gujarat Safai Kamdar Mahamandal since December 28, 2021.

One of the protesters, Jyoti Vaghela, said, “Four hundred posts of safai karmacharis are vacant in GMC and yet the authorities are not filling them. They outsource the task to a private agency that exploits workers.”

Jyoti’s husband, Kirit, is one of the leaders of the group. “My husband began an indefinite fast while pressing for our demands a few days ago. However, police arrested him on February 13 and since then he has been in Sabarmati Central Jail in Ahmedabad. He is continuing his fast from inside the jail,” she said.

A senior police officer of Sector 7 police station under which the area falls said that Kirit was arrested as a preventive measure but he refused to furnish bail and so, was sent to jail as per the orders of the executive magistrate.

Sunil Vaghela, a leader of the group who has been supporting the protesting safai workers, alleged that the workers have been facing a lot of exploitation under the outsourcing policy of the corporation and that they should be regularised.

Sunil said that the GMC authorities were citing a government circular that says that Class IV employees’ posts have to be outsourced. But the circular is only applicable to the state government posts and not to those of municipal corporation, which is an autonomous body, he added.

One of the protesters, Vandanika Solanki, said, “The government always talks about the poor during elections… But when poor people like us demand our right, nobody from the government is bothered.”

Gandhinagar Mayor Hitesh Makwana said, “There is a clear circular of the (Gujarat) government that we have to fill up the Class IV vacancies through outsourcing… So, even if it is our sentiment to make regular appointments on these posts (instead of outsourcing them), we cannot do that due to the circular.”

Makwana said that of the 1,020 safai workers working in GMC, only 125 are regular employees and the rest are employed through outsourcing to private agencies.

“The protesters used to work under a private agency that was outsourced the task of sanitation by GMC. But they were removed from the job by the agencies due to irregular work. At present, they are not even employees of the private agencies. Only a few of them actually worked for GMC under the agencies and the rest are outsiders who have joined the protest to do politics over the issue,” Makwana added.