Delhi: Ahead of MCD Polls, Civic Employees Raise Demand for Immediate Resolution to Salary Delays

New Delhi: Angered over the still prevailing delay in disbursal of salaries, employees under numerous civic body unions staged a demonstration on Monday outside the Civic Centre building, which serves as the headquarters for the national capital’s municipal corporation.

Led by the Confederation of MCD Employees’ Union, an umbrella group of civic body unions, the protesting employees said they would go on an indefinite strike in the coming days if the long pending issues at hand are not resolved immediately.

The employees, frustrated by late payments of their salary, are pinning hopes for a resolution to their problems around the elections to the three municipal corporations, slated for early next year. There are 272 wards under the three civic bodies – North, South, and East – in Delhi, for whose control a pitched political battle has already begun between the incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), and Congress.

AP Khan, the convenor of the union confederation, said that the talks between the union representatives and the MCD officials have failed in reaching any solution.

“They don’t have any blueprint as of yet to regularise our payments. On the other hand, we have been demanding that the three MCDs must be unified, or at least, a one-time bailout package from the Centre must be sought,” he told NewsClick over the phone.

The Municipal Corporation of Delhi was trifurcated back in 2012 by the then Sheila Dixit-led Congress Government in the national capital.

According to Khan, on Monday, over 200 employees, including the teachers, safai karamcharis, and clerical staff, participated in the protest outside Civic Centre.

“We will wait till evening to see if any attempt is being made by the MCD officials to talk to us. If our issues are not resolved immediately, then we will go on an indefinite strike in the coming days,” he said.

To be sure, health staff employed at North MCD–run hospitals too staged a strike action earlier this month to bring to the fore their grievances regarding salary payments and arrears in dearness allowance and the bonus. According to The Hindu, the category C and D workers at these hospitals will again go for a 24-hour strike from Monday.

On Monday, Kuldeep Khatri, president of Shiksha Nyaya Manch Nagar Nigam, told NewsClick that close to 7,000 teachers in the MCD-run schools hadn’t received their salaries since the past four months.

“We have planned to stage a protest outside the national headquarters of BJP to put pressure on them ahead of the elections. We will decide upon the date of the protest in the evening,” he said.

Meanwhile, assurances were given ahead of Monday’s protest by the North MCD officials for the payment of salaries soon to the aggrieved employees. “Civic officials have also approached the Union ministry of finance to discuss a possible solution to the existing fund crisis,” North MCD’s standing committee chairman Jogi Ram Jain was quoted by the Hindustan Times as saying.

On the other hand, the problem of delayed salary payments in the municipal corporations, once again, triggered an exchange of blames between the AAP and the BJP, both of which seemed to have entered into the campaigning mode for the upcoming MCD elections and are looking to score political points.

Over the years, the AAP has alleged corruption and financial irregularities in the corporations, while the BJP has maintained that the non-disbursal of funds by the Arvind Kejriwal government to the three corporations has led to the delays in the payment of salaries.

Flaying both the parties, Ram Nivas Solanki of MCD Teachers’ Association told NewsClick on Monday that the employees are now only pinning hopes on the voters for the resolution of their issues.

“It is only around elections that we hope to find a solution to our problems. Otherwise, for years, we’ve been protesting and striking work and no resolution has been reached,” he said.