Ludhiana MC employees protest due to delayed salaries & other demands

Under the banner of Sewerman Sanitation Employees Sangharsh Committee, sewage and sanitation workers staged a protest outside the Zone A municipal corporation (MC) office due to  delay in receiving their salaries, despite being regularised six months ago. 

The protesters, comprising over 4,000 employees, claimed that the authorities have cited pending police verification and medical examinations of new recruits as the reason behind the delay. The union urged the authorities to expedite the process and submitted a memorandum to Zonal Commissioner Sonam Chaudhary.

Vijay Danav, representing the workers, highlighted that the delay in receiving salaries has caused financial difficulties for the workers. The union also demanded the regularisation of over 800 workers who are above 42 years of age and are yet to be regularised. In addition, they demanded the deployment of regular sanitary supervisors in all 95 wards of the city, as currently, only 19 regular sanitary supervisors are receiving financial benefits while others are performing their duties without such benefits.

The union members further demanded that the employees’ provident fund, deducted from their salaries, should be updated, and class 4 employees should be provided with uniforms.

Meanwhile, members of the municipal corporation employees’ union and MC drivers and employees, including zonal commissioner Jasdev Singh Sekhon, expressed their grievances to municipal commissioner Shena Aggarwal on 26 April 2023, regarding the delay in their March salaries. As a response, the MC commissioner ordered that the previous month’s salaries for the 6,000 regular employees would be transferred manually. 

The delay was due to the ongoing process of updating the human resource management system, which was to transfer salaries automatically to the employees’ bank accounts.