Gurgaon: MCG will hire 124 additional sanitation workers for Zone 4 to strengthen road sweeping and garbage clearance, with the new workforce expected to be deployed for seven months from Oct.The civic body has estimated the cost of the deployment at Rs 1.9 crore and has started the tender process to appoint an agency. The workers will be deployed across wards 1, 2, 3, 4, 35 and 36, besides DLF Phase 2 and 3, Sectors 5, 6, 21, 22A, 22B and 23A, among other areas.An MCG official said Zone 4 currently has 42 sanitation workers, which is insufficient to cover the areas under it.“We have initiated the tender process to hire an agency that will provide us 124 sanitation workers for zone 4. We need this additional requirement since this zone has less number of sanitation workers. In other zones, we already have more than 100 sanitation workers for each zone,” the official said.The move comes amid repeated concerns over sanitation manpower and service delivery.In July, the civic body imposed a penalty of more than Rs 5.3 lakh on a private contractor after an inspection found shortages of sanitation workers and tractor-trolleys in Zone 4. The contractor was required to deploy 70 workers and 10 tractor-trolleys on a daily basis, but continuous deficiencies were recorded.MCG has also faced scrutiny over its overall sanitation workforce. In November last year, several discrepancies were reported between the number of workers listed by the corporation and ward-level deployment figures, with councillors simultaneously flagging the inadequate manpower in several wards.The shortage remains a citywide concern. Earlier, in Aug, sanitation workers went on a 37-day strike over demands including regularisation of contractual employees, disrupting garbage clearance for several days.At a recent meeting chaired by Haryana ULB minister Vipul Goel, mayor Raj Rani Malhotra also sought additional sanitation staff for Gurgaon. Malhotra said that the city requires at least 3,000 additional sanitation workers and the minister assured that the requirement would be addressed.
