Team Herald
MARGAO: Margao Municipal Council workers held a strike in the Margao Municipal building on Wednesday, leaving heaps of garbage uncollected around the town.
More than 250 municipal workers were seen seated and shouting slogans and demanding the arrest of those accused in assaulting the sanitary inspector. Margao Police Inspector C L Patil, in a meeting with the Union leaders and councillors has asked for 10 days to carry out investigations in the case and has also said that there will be no bargaining and proper procedures will be followed.
Municipal Administration Director Elvis Gomes met the MMC workers and Councillors late Wednesday evening and requested the agitating workers to end the strike so as to avoid trouble to the residents of the town.
“This issue at the MMC is a non-administrative issue and the public shouldn’t be at loss or put in trouble due to these reasons. I have only come with a message of Deputy Chief Minister of requesting to stop the strike as it is not an employer-employee problem,” the DMA director said.
Advocate Rajeev Gomes and others from the civil society group that had come to the MMC in the morning apologizing for the incident, tried to present flowers to the leader of the workers requesting them to call off the strike. However the group did not budge from their demand of having the accused trio arrested.
Most of the municipal employees be they daily wage workers or office staff, registered their attendance on the bio metric apparatus and signed the muster which raised eyebrows of the people. Margao residents are now asking whether the employees will be paid for striking and wasting a day.
“The Police have already wasted six days in the name of investigation and their stand that the law doesn’t permit them to arrest is shocking. Police have every right to arrest and we are insisting upon it,” said Margao Municipal Workers’ Association president Anil Shirodkar. “If they are apologetic why don’t the trio come and apologise to us? We want their apologies as the people need to know that no one can bully an employee for any municipal purpose,” Shirodkar added.
The Margao PI, however, is not in a hurry to arrest the trio. “There is no provision to arrest immediately. Supreme Court guidelines also restrain us from doing so without examining the evidence. We need 10 days. We will hear all the witnesses, including our police, and then take a decision,” said Patil.
“I am not here to bargain on your demands. Anyways the opposite case is weak and time will decide the fate of that case,” he added. The PI, while giving some tips to the chairperson, said it is the chairperson who has to advise police to control, stop or act and police cannot do it suo-moto.
Meanwhile, the civil society group is furious over the closure of MMC on Wednesday. “How can the chairperson and councillors support the striking workers of MMC knowing that it will cause inconvenience to the people? This act is shameful and condemnable,” said Rajeev Gomes.
