BMC Shifts Slum Cleaning Contract, Leaving 75,000 Current Workers to Face Unemployment

Mumbai: As many as 75,000 people will be unemployed as the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has decided to take away the work of cleaning slums from a federation of cooperative societies and give it to a single organization under the Swachh Mumbai Abhiyan. The Federation of Brihanmumbai Unemployed Service Cooperative Societies has taken an aggressive stand and protested. The federation has threatened to launch an agitation if the decision is not withdrawn. 

Unemployed and service organizations are affiliated to the Federation of Brihanmumbai Unemployed Service Cooperative Societies. In 2000, the state government promulgated an ordinance to register service cooperatives for the unemployed to get employment. As a result, organizations of the unemployed began to get jobs.   These organizations have been providing essential services through contract workers for the last 25 years. These workers go door-to-door in slums to collect garbage, maintain cleanliness in slums, clean public toilets, clean drainage lines, etc. It works day and night shifts.  This work provides them with employment. These workers were doing their work even during the coronavirus pandemic.

Former Leader of Opposition in the BMC Ravi Raja has opposed the BMC's decision and has urged Chief Minister Eknath Shinde to cancel the decision. The decision to appoint sanitation workers through social organizations and give them work was taken by the elected representatives of the municipality at that time. "Who gave the administration the power to make decisions when the civic body was dissolved when there were no public representatives?" he asked.  According to Raja, the contract of the civic body is worth Rs 1,200 crore. The civic body's decision will put a foot on the stomachs of thousands of unemployed people.

Letter to the municipality:

The work was withdrawn from the unemployed cooperatives after the civic body received some complaints about the work of these institutions. The work will now be given to a large company. The federation has written a letter to additional commissioner Dr. K.K. Sharma, demanding that the process of awarding contracts to a single entity be scrapped.