The Municipal Mazdoor Union (MMU) has declared a morcha (demonstration) at Azad Maidan on Tuesday, June 17, against privatisation of services by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). MMU General Secretary, Pradeep Narkar said, "We expect more than 5000 members to join our protest against privatisation. The BMC workers will not keep quiet now. Our jobs are been given to contractors to please politicians."
Narkar added that since the BMC is under administrative rule, there is no opposition to any decisions taken by the commissioner. "The orders come from politicians in power and the administration agrees. This is not done. Recently the BMC floated tenders to appoint contractor workers for solid waste management department, transportation etc for 21 wards and plans to shift the civic employees to second shift. This is nothing but to please the contractors in favour," the union leader said.
The union's protest against the privatisation started when the BMC floated tenders to run Borivali's Bhagwati hospital on Public Private Partnership (PPP) model. After intense protests, the administration has kept the plan on hold. However, there is no clarity about other BMC hospitals like Shatabdi in Govandi, one at Lalu Bhai Compound in Mankhurd and others.
"May it be garbage transplantation, hospital services or water supply, the BMC employees are responsible to do their jobs properly. If anything goes wrong, as public servants they are answerable and are face strict actions. But, the contract workers are not answerable to public after a point. The contract is cancelled and no further action is taken. The services of BMC are already criticised and privatisation will worsen it," Narkar added.
As per the union, BMC's total scheduled posts are 1,45, 573 lakh, however at present the corporation has only 85,000 post filled. There is no update on hiring on the vacant posts.
