Not a single sanitation worker will come to your locality to pick up garbage leaving the Capital below the heaps of garbage again.

With over 1.5 lakh sanitation workers on strike from Friday, approximately 10,000 metric tonnes of garbage would be left undumped. The sanitation workers told Mail Today the reason for their strike at this time. "We chose declare the strike now is because this is the time when the city needs attention after a weeklong festive season," they said.

"They (authorities) have not paid salaries to all the workers and even arrears are due. The sanitation workers are financially burdened. They do not have money to pay for the education of their children or to get them married. We are only asking for our due share. We gave up our holidays during the outbreak of dengue. After two days, when the heaps of garbage lying on the road would start affecting the city, the corporations would understand our plight," said Rajender Mewati, General Secretary of United Front of MCD Employees Associations.

On Friday, sanitation workers claimed that not even a single garbage trolley was used to lift garbage.

The striking sanitation workers of all the three MCDs have been demanding regularisation of daily wagers working for over a decade, timely payment of salaries, arrears, cashless health cards and other long-pending demands. The workers said if the corporation can deduct LIC, GIC from their salary, why cannot it take the undertaking for the workers when they apply for loan in the nationalised banks? This has forced a lot of workers to opt for private financing indebting themselves in huge amounts.

On the other hand, the three mayors of corporations met Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia in a bid to find a solution to end the strike but said there was no concrete outcome after the meeting. Similarly, the representatives of the sanitation workers also met officials from MCD but in vain.

Indulging in blame game, Subhash Arya, Mayor, South Delhi MCD said, "Delhi government is playing politics and misleading the people by releasing false information regarding the release of funds. He said the data given by officials in the meeting is not accurate and we demand that all the pending funds be released for Safai Karmcharis and developmental work in three MCDs."

Similarly, Ravinder Gupta, Mayor, North MCD said, "The sanitation staff has been paid their salary and their demand of payment of arrear is also under consideration and efforts are being made to meet the same." However, Gupta said: "North Delhi Municipal Corporation would install small waste to energy plants in each Assembly constituency so that garbage generated from the area is properly disposed of without incurring any expenditure of transportation of garbage to landfill site."

The news of the indefinite strike has begun worrying the residents. The residents told Mail Today, that the garbage lifting mechanism of MCD had already failed. Whatever the garbage was getting picked would also stop now. "MCD is playing with the lives of the residents. If the MLAs and councilors can demand a hike in their salary, why can't these workers be paid the due amount?" questioned Chetan Sharma, general secretary, Confederation of NCR Residents' Welfare Association.