A day after the floral tribute to frontline health care workers by the Indian armed forces, sanitation workers cleaning the COVID-19 wards of Gandhi Hospital in Telangana boycotted duty for three hours on Monday morning from 7 am to 10 am. “All we get is flowers thrown at us, which again we are the ones who have to clean later on," says Sujatha (name changed), who works at the COVID-19 ward in Gandhi hospital.
The workers demanded regularisation of employment, as most of them have been working for more than 15 years now under a private contractor with a wage less than Rs 8,000 in hand, per month.
The regularisation demand has been long pending, and sanitation workers are running from pillar to post with their representation, seeking help from government and opposition leaders alike. However it hasn't yielded any results. "We are not being given due recognition for our work at all. Neither are they increasing our salaries, nor giving us any incentive like that of Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) sanitation workers," says a worker on condition of anonymity.
"It's not the floral tributes that we need, all we need is regularisation with decent salaries. Even the central government has to take a note of the situation and intervene,” another worker adds.
Workers say that they are even working double shifts as some of the workers have quit their jobs owing to pressure from their families and neighbours.
“We are working as hard as the regular employees in the COVID-19 wards. We are being pushed to do all the risky work, which includes cleaning of washrooms, vomits of coronavirus patients, and everything with the risk of being contaminated. But when we demand regularisation, nobody bothers to answer us,” another worker says.
Recalling Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao’s promise in the Assembly in 2017, where he said that workers who have been on contract for years should be regularised, they ask why these promises have not been met yet.
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