The Municipal workers’ strike entered a week on Monday
Garbage has piled up in the Chilkalguda municipal office as the GHMC workers strike enters the seventh day on Monday. (Photo: DC)
Hyderabad: The Municipal workers’ strike entered a week on Monday as the city remained buried under garbage. Notwithstanding perennial complaints that garbage collection during normal times is patchy at best, the strike has proved the high dependence of the city on the sanitation workers.
Urban planners from the city meanwhile say that sanitation workers deserve a hike and also a revamped solid waste management system. They point out that the lifting and transportation system should be modernised. “The transportation of waste is done in huge trucks which carry more volume and less weight. This increases the number of trips the vehicles have to make to completely clear the garbage and debris. The vehicles should be modified to increase their capacity,” said G. Shankar Narayan, urban planning expert and architect from Hyderabad.
Noted economist and former chairperson of the high-powered expert committee on urban infrastructure services, Isher Judge Ahluwalia, had noted in one of her papers that Hyderabad was one of the few corporations which had achieved full cost recovery of operation and management in solid waste management services.
This can be further improved by saving money on transportation, Mr Narayan said. “The trucks need to be optimised and the corporation can append one more trolley to the existing trucks, which will double the amount of garbage they carry which will save fuel and time without much expenditure,” he said.
Innovations in the ho-use-to-house collection method are also required to increase the amount of garbage being collected in a trip. Apart from charging small amounts for door-to-door collection, apartments and gated communities should also be charged for the amount of waste they generate. “The approach towards waste segregation will definitely change once something like this is done. In the long run, it is decentralized management and adding technology like biomethanation plants, localised waste to energy plants across each zone in the city, which will help,” Mr Narayan said.
GHMC staff to gherao mantris, intensify stir:
The striking GHMC unions have reiterated their resolve to intensify their agitation till all their demands are met. The workers will launch a relay hunger strike from Tuesday, gherao the ministers’ residences besides stopping their water supply.
Before leaving for Dharmasagar in Karimnagar district along with his family to launch the Godavari Pushkaralu, CM K. Chandrasekhar Rao held a meeting with ministers and officials at his camp office to review the strike issue. He asked the striking workers to realise that they were only outsourcing staff, which could be replaced with immediate effect. Mr Rao reminded that he himself had assured to revise the salaries of outsourced employees while participating in the Swachh Hyderabad campaign.
“The process to revise their salaries was already initiated. Instead of cooperating with the government, the workers fell into the trap of some trade unions and joined the strike,” he said.
( Source : deccan chronicle )
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