Sweepers in western India demand a fair share

Gandhinagar, Gujarat: Even as heavy rains lash Gujarat's capital Gandhinagar, a group of women and men sit on a plastic sheet to continue their protest. They have another plastic sheet on top to protect themselves from getting wet.

Meet more than 80 safai kamdars or cleaning staff, who have been on strike for over a month to press for long pending demands. They work on a contractual basis as sweepers in Gandhinagar.

Fighting for their due / Photo credit: ActionAid

The sweepers are employed for four hours daily for 15 or 30 days a month. They get a paltry sum of Rs 30 per day, at times leaving them with just Rs 10 at the end of the day if they travel long distance to work.

For example 40-year-old Tulsi Vaghela comes from a village Palej near Gandhinagar. "At times I spend Rs 30 in commuting. I continue to come for work only hoping that some day I will be made permanent and my salary will run into a couple of thousands," she says.

For the last 18 years, Sharda Solanki, 45, spends half the amount she earns to reach Gandhinagar and go back home in suburb Chiloda. Sharda, who is lucky that both her husband and son earn, says that she will fight till the end.

Their demands

The safai kamdars' key demands are that they should be paid minimum wages and given identity cards. They also want that some of their fellow safai kamdars, who were dismissed on flimsy grounds, be taken back.

Besides, they are demanding that the timings and the locations of their duty should be fixed.

The strike is legal and it will further intensify, says Hauslaprasad Mishra of Kamdar Swasthya Suraksha Mandal or KSSM, an ActionAid partner organisation. A state resolution mandates one safai kamdar for a population of 750 people and an area of 25 square meters. Going by that calculation the city still needs over 900 cleaning staff.

But a right to information application revealed that the state has hired only 150-odd workers on a permanent basis. What's more, protesting workers allege that about 30-odd names on government records are ghost names.

"The Dalit Valmiki community has swept streets for years. So how can one believe that people with upper caste surnames like Pandya and Thaker would do this work," ask Zakir Kazi and Jyotsna Raval of KSSM.

No electricity, homes or education

A mother of two sons and one daughter, 38-year-old Hiraben Shankerbhai Solanki has been working for the last 20 years every 15 days a month. Her husband who is also a sweeper fetches Rs 1,500 a month. They can't afford to give higher education to their children.

"My children have failed one year. I don't want them to take up the work we are doing. But what can we do with such meagre money?" asks Hiraben.

Several kamdars live under tarpaulin sheets or in other kinds of makeshift shelters. Their colonies have no roads, water supply, electricity or even a decent place to answer nature's call. Often the authorities break their fragile houses.

Hansaben Vaghela, another worker, says, "It is difficult to go to work in public transport. Seeing broom and other equipment in our hands, bus drivers refuse to let us in for they will lose other passengers”.

Some safai kamdars also say that not all of them get the necessary equipment to sweep.

Exploitation

A major complaint of the workers is that they are made to work in the houses of local officials repeatedly. "At times we are made to work for over four hours for nothing at the district official's place," says 40-year-old Vimlaben Kaushik Vadadara.

Once while Dilip Vitthal Solanki was working at a senior official's home last year, he forgot to tie up the family's pet dog. "For that I was dismissed from work," he says.

From now on sweepers will not be made to work in officers' houses, says S M Chaudhary of the state's urban development department.

But he is quick to add, "If the sweepers want, they can do any work in their private time”.

The workers are awaiting judgment on a case they filed in the High Court against contractual service. "They will go the whole hog. They will not stop agitating till the government gives a written assurance of fulfilling their needs," says Ashfaq Mohammed of ActionAid.