MARGAO: Even as a 12-member team of Margao Municipal Councillors is headed to Hyderabad on a junket to study solid waste management, the 170 daily wage workers engaged in the door-to-door waste collection are yet to be paid their wages for the month of August.
While the city fathers managed to get the Urban Development Minister, Francis D’Souza to sanction the Hyderabad junket, the daily wage workers have been left high and dry with no one lobbying for them to obtain funds for the door-to-door waste collectionexercise.
It’s now September 10 and the 170 workers who were engaged specifically for the waste collection programme since August 1, have gone unpaid so far.
The Margao Municipal Sanitary section on Wednesday faxed a detailed request to the office of Director of Municipal Administration to release the promised grant of Rs 64 lakh to meet the manpower expenses and the vehicles for three months. “We had made a detailed requisition to the DMA’s office on August 18 on the funds required to meet the expenses on manpower and machinery. But, since the DMA’s office maintained that it has not received the proposal, we have faxed the same on Wednesday evening,” informed a civic official.
While the daily wage workers have been inquiring with the sanitation office on the payment of their wages, the Municipality was insisting that the payments will be made no sooner the government releases the funds. Incidentally, the government had committed funds to the Margao civic body for the waste collection exercise only for three months, with the municipal solid waste management cell now exploring the possibility of engaging NGOs to carry out the exercise, beginning in ward 4 and 9.
