Gurgaon: The protesting Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) sanitation workers called off their two-week strike on Thursday following a late-night meeting with Urban Local Bodies Minister Vipul Goel in Chandigarh, temporarily alleviating the city's mounting garbage problem.
Strike Suspended Until June 30
The workers' union announced that the agitation has been suspended until June 30 after the state government assured them that their long-pending demands would be addressed. However, union leaders warned that the strike would resume from July 1 if no concrete action is taken.
“We held a meeting with minister Vipul Goel and senior ULB officials at Haryana Niwas on Wednesday night. He assured us that our 17-point charter of demands would be considered and implemented. Based on these assurances, we have decided to suspend the strike till June 30,” said Basant Kumar, president of the Gurgaon unit of the municipal workers’ union.
Key Demands of Workers
The workers have been demanding regularisation of contractual employees, reinstatement of retrenched workers, withdrawal of punitive action during protests, better wages, safety equipment, and an end to the contractual hiring system. Similar protests over these demands have erupted repeatedly in Gurgaon over the past few years, with workers alleging that successive assurances by authorities were never fully implemented.
Impact of the Strike
The sanitation workers went on strike on May 1 after talks with state officials failed to produce a breakthrough. Since then, sweeping of roads, garbage lifting, and waste clearance from roads and vacant plots remained suspended, leading to piles of waste accumulating in several parts of the city. During the last two weeks, residents across sectors complained of foul smell, overflowing garbage dumping points, and deteriorating hygiene conditions.
MCG officials deployed private sanitation agencies to manage waste collection and sweeping through outsourced workers, but residents said the arrangements were inadequate. The agitating workers in the past two weeks also obstructed the outsourced staff from collecting waste, disrupting the city’s sanitation operations.
