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Heaps of garbage lie unattended at a vegetable market in Jharia on Saturday. Picture by Gautam Dey
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Dhanbad, Oct. 27: Dhanbad district continues to raise a stink as the indefinite strike by over 600 sanitation workers of civic body Mineral Area Development Authority (Mada) entered its 20th day today.
An amicable agreement between the striking employees, who have been clamouring for salaries pending for 20 months, and MADA authorities is nowhere in sight even as the district administration vowed to begin cleanliness work from tomorrow.
Jharia MLA Kunti Singh and her Nirsa counterpart Arup Chatterjee threatened to take up the matter with the powers that be in Ranchi. “If a solution is not worked out within a day or two, I will be compelled to seek the intervention of chief minister Arjun Munda,” said Singh.
Chatterjee said he would speak to urban development department secretary Nitin Madan Kulkarni.
Deputy commissioner Prashant Kumar, however, came up with a temporary solution of roping in employees of Dhanbad Municipal Corporation to get rid of the accumulated garbage that threatens to trigger diseases like dengue, typhoid, dysentery and others.
“As the employees of Mada are refusing to budge from their unreasonable demands, we have decided to carry out cleaning with the help of Dhanbad Municipal Corporation workers. Cleaning will start in the affected areas from tomorrow with each councillor of all 55 wards of Dhanbad town being provided with five contract labourers,” said DC Kumar.
He added that the councillors had been asked to constitute committees with local residents for providing security to corporation workers as they embark on cleanliness drives. This is because Mada employees had earlier beaten up workers of Dhanbad Municipal Corporation — both civic bodies are in the process of a thorny merger — when they were pressed into action.
However, the DC’s decision has not gone down well with many councillors. “This is not a serious attempt to find a permanent solution but rather responsibilities are being shifted to other people. The administration has security personnel at its disposal and they should deploy police personnel to ensure security of the civic employees,” said councillor of ward No. 37 of Jharia Anup Sao.
Chief executive officer of Dhanbad Municipal Corporation A.K. Pandey, on the other hand, was firm about beginning work from tomorrow. “Cleaning work will begin from Jharia, which is most filthy. If needed, we will take help from police to provide security to our workers,” Pandey said.
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