Muzaffarpur, March 13: Taps in Muzaffarpur town went waterless this morning with almost 700 municipal employees embarking on an indefinite strike to protest inordinate delay in payment of their salaries.

The corporation has not paid salaries to its employees for eight long months. Right since this morning, the water supply was completely snapped off, thereby forcing citizens to fetch potable drinking water from outside. Moreover, civic amenities too suffered, as the agitating employees prevented the personnel of Nidan, the private cleansing agency entrusted with removing garbage from the city roads, from carrying out their duties. Nidan workers also clean choked drains in 19 wards of the town.

Last evening, hundreds of agitating employees under the banner of Muzaffarpur Nagar Nigam Karamchari Sangh and headed by secretary Rameshwar Rai and president Ashok Kumar locked the chambers of the mayor, Bimla Devi Tulsiyan, and municipal commissioner Ashok Kumar Singh and requested them to facilitate payment of their salaries for eight months before Holi, else the duo should brace to face their wrath.

Suspension of supply from municipal water towers hit the residents the worst.

Residents of Chandwara, Jail Chowk, Naya Tola, Mithanpura and several other areas falling under corporation areas are entirely dependent on water supplied by the corporation. “Residents of Suttapatti, however, have complained to the mayor about the acute shortage of potable water owing to the employees’ strike,” said Arvind Poddar, a trader on Jawaharlal Road.

Muzaffarpur Nagar Nigam Karamchari Sangh secretary Rameshwar Rai said: “The state government has completely ignored the plight of the employees of the corporation.”