The civic body has, as promised, begun direct payment to pourakarmikas. Their salaries for the month of November, payable on December 1, will directly be credited to their accounts instead of routing it through garbage contractors.
The contractors are now restricted to renting out their vehicles and drivers to the civic body.
While pourakarmika unions have welcomed the move, there are concerns as biometric registration and attendance, which will weed out fake names from the rolls, is being implemented in only four zones.
Sarfaraz Khan, Joint Commissioner (Solid Waste Manager), said that the number of pourakarmikas is fixed at around 18,000. This is as per the State government’s norms which prescribe one pourakarmika per 700 population, which adds up to 17,858 pourakarmikas for a population of 1.25 crore for the city. “Biometric registration and attendance is an ongoing process, which will be implemented across the city by the end of November. We are supplementing this with other modes of verification – only those with two years of working records with ESI and PF accounts are being considered apart from an on-ground verification of pourakarmikas by the unions,” he said.
Maitreyi Krishnan of BBMP Guttige Pourakarmikara Sangha hoped that a combination of biometric and manual attendance, ESI and PF records with on-ground verification would weed out fake names from the list.
It can be recalled that the contractors had submitted a list of over 32,000 pourakarmikas to the civic body in May 2017.
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