After toiling throughout the successive waves of the pandemic despite peril to their lives, waste collectors of the city-based SWaCH — a cooperative of self-employed waste collectors — have protested the Pune Municipal Corporation’s (PMC) failure to give them benefits like life insurance and dues for the work accomplished during the lockdowns.
SWaCH’s unique contract system has helped the PMC save hundreds of crores of rupees. “The waste collectors have yet to receive the safety equipment, life insurance, medical assistance, and allowances in spite of written promises of corporators and councillors,” Harshad Barde, director of SWaCH, said.
He said that the PMC proffering ad hoc short-term extensions of the contract by a single or couple of years was akin to a “pandemic band aid’, and unlikely to benefit the waste management, people, and the waste pickers.
On Monday, more than 50 waste pickers (as per COVID-19 norms), under labour leader Baba Adhav, staged a protest in front of the PMC office. The agitation was backed by the Congress, which accused the BJP, which controls the PMC, of denying SWaCH workers their rights.
The PMC’s contract with SWaCH expired in December 2020 and only temporary extensions of one or two months have been granted since to the waste collectors, adding to the uncertainty of their livelihoods.
“A few months or a one-year extension is a poor sop designed to tide over the critical election period [PMC poll in 2022] and then we will be dumped by the wayside. There will be no discussion on the lacunae in the system. We have toiled to set up this model. Without us, the PMC would have had to spend an additional ₹500 crore over five years,” Supriya Bhadakwad, a waste collector, said.
Vidya Naiknaware, another waste collector, said that citizens paid a nominal ₹2 per day for garbage collection services, while the taxpayers saved over ₹100 crore a year owing to the SWaCH model.
“Our cooperative collects 75% of the city’s waste while the other 25% collection, serviced directly by private contractors or the PMC’s trash collectors, costs citizens three or four times more. We are completely opposed to short-term extensions and demand concrete solutions to our problems,” she said.
The 3,500 waste pickers of SWaCH provide door-step collection service to nearly 8.5 lakh properties in Pune (more than 70% of the city’s total properties) daily.
Their globally recognised model ensures highest segregation and recycling of waste at the lowest cost to the city. With a majority of Dalit women operating and leading the cooperative, SWaCH has managed to empower the poorest and most marginalised citizens of Pune while offering a convenient and sustainable waste collection system.
“What is the BJP, which reigns supreme in the PMC, up to? Does it intend to drive these waste pickers out of their jobs by destroying the SWaCH cooperative model? These waste collectors, who bear the brunt of the city’s waste collection, have been seeking redress for their grievances time and time again. Yet, on every occasion, they have been fobbed off by the BJP corporators and the Mayor with false promises,” Pune Congress spokesperson Ramesh Iyer said.
SWaCH’s waste collectors had also in August last year staged a symbolic protest against the delay on part of the Pune civic body administration in giving them benefits.
