Delivery workers of Blinkit, a grocery delivery app, staged a protest in south Delhi’s Malviya Nagar on Monday against the grocery aggregator platform’s decision to shift to a flat payout rate for their services.
The decision has been implemented in Malviya Nagar for now and will apply to all areas in the city in future, as per the protesters. The company management did not respond to an email seeking their response.
The delivery workers were earlier paid different remunerations depending upon the time of the order, but protesters said that the company management had told them on January 7 that they would be paid a flat ₹15 per order.
Mubin, a delivery worker with Blinkit, said that earlier, the payments ranged between ₹25 and ₹32 per order, allowing them to earn ₹2,000 after a 10-hour workday. “Now, even if we work for 12 hours, we will hardly make ₹1,000 a day,” he said.
Speaking to The Hindu, Apurva Sharma, Convenor, App Karamchari Ekta Union (AKEU), said that to suppress the protest, the management got two of the riders detained unjustly.
“Despite the fact that companies like Zomato-Blinkit are reaping millions of rupees in profit, they have been continuously reducing the rates per delivery to their workers. This is not the first time that Blinkit riders have protested against the rate cards” added Ms. Sharma. She told The Hindu that AKEU has given several representations regarding the demands of app workers to the Delhi government but the government is yet to respond.
