Hyderabad, February 17: The GHMC contractors who engage sweepers to clean the city roads, mostly at nights, expose them to high risk but do not pay them even minimum wages, not to speak of other service benefits and financial aid in case of accidental death.
The contractors manage to deny the benefits to the sweepers by not registering themselves with the Labour department, though it is mandatory.
Even the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) has not registered itself with the labour department despite repeated reminders!
According to some sweepers, the contractors deliberately avoid labour department registration to escape from paying the minimum wage of Rs 5,600. Instead, they pay Rs 4,030 to each sweeper.
The GHMC, which itself is on the wrong side of the law as far as the registration is concerned, is not in a position to take up their case for higher wages, they lamented.
A look at the numbers brings out the gravity of the situation. As of today, there are 18,700 sweepers working in the city.
Some of them are covered under the DWACRA groups while the remaining are hired by contractors. Some 400 contractors associated with the GHMC engage them but none has been registered, the objective being avoiding payment of wages according to the Labour Act.
Further, registered contractors are made accountable for several other things related to their staff.
“It is the responsibility of the contractor to get himself registered, otherwise he will be prosecuted. Still the contractors have been flouting the rules with impunity,” a senior labour department official said.
“None of the families of the GHMC sweepers who died in mishaps while on the job got the PF and ESI benefits so far,” alleged Masoom Shareef, co-convener of the Telangana Municipal Employees and Workers Joint Action Committee. This was mainly due to the negligent attitude of the GHMC authorities, he added.
According to him, nearly Rs 600 was being deducted monthly from the wages for ESI and PF but the same was not being remitted. The amount had accumulated to Rs 40 crore, Shareef said.
“Because of the non-remittance, the victims’ families can neither approach the GHMC nor the ESI for aid,” Shareef lamented.
However, dismissing the allegation, GHMC Additional Commissioner, Sanitation, Aleem Basha said Rs 40 cr had been deposited with the ESI and PF last year.
-Agencies