Photo-ops with brooms and daily inspections will continue, but municipal officials say systemic reforms to the Capital’s sanitation services are long overdue.
As a part of Prime Minister’s Swachh Bharat (Clean India) campaign, the three municipal corporations of Delhi have gone into overdrive since October 2 to prove that sanitation services are improving. While garbage collection has increased, senior officials in the corporations say they have been unable to enact major reforms.
Officials say the major problems preventing the civic bodies from really cleaning up the city include the lack of a clear transfer policy for sanitation staff, irrational deployment of sanitation workers and the Delhi Government’s delay in notifying the draft sanitation bye-laws.
South Delhi Municipal Corporation Commissioner Manish Gupta said the sanitation bye-laws have been pending with the State government since September 2013. If enacted, the laws will impose heavy fines on all forms of littering.
Amendments to the transfer policies for safai karamcharis and supervisory staff have been pending for months. Officials in the three municipal corporations recommend a two-year posting for safai karamcharis in each ward. But, political leaders opposed this, saying that the policy would end up sending workers to far off wards, thus wasting their time and hampering their work. North Delhi Municipal Corporation Standing Committee chairperson Mohan Prasad Bharadwaj said the workers’ circumstances need to be taken into account as they are from economically weaker sections of society.
The civic bodies have also failed to ensure 100 per cent attendance of the 60,000 sanitation workers employed by them. Mr. Bharadwaj as well as North Corporation Commissioner Pravin Kumar Gupta said attendance was an issue. “We have to ensure that all the sanitation workers don’t just record their attendance and then disappear from the field,” said Mr. Gupta.
However, when and how these reforms will be implemented remain to be seen.
