Striking DBCs given a day to join
Even as dengue continues to spread its tentacles in the city, half of the entire work force of the domestic breeding checkers (DBCs), who check for mosquito breeding in residential, institutional and commercial establishments, went on an indefinite strike on Monday demanding regularisation of jobs. There are around 3,200 DBCs of
whom about 1,600 are working. The MCD has appealed to them to return to work as the city is facing a dengue outbreak. However, the officials also said that their services may be terminated if they did not pay heed to the appeal. The issue was also discussed in the MCD House, where councillors across party lines expressed concern over the situation.
Leader of the House, Subhash Arya said that the services of the DBCs can be terminated as they were on contract. However, he appealed to them to return to work. “We can easily appoint new DBCs as there is a long waiting list of people wanting to be enrolled on contract,” said Mr Arya. However, officials maintained that, as and when the exercise was undertaken, it would take nearly a week to get new DBCs, who will then have to be given basic training.
Chairman of the MCD’s health committee, V.K. Monga said that the DBCs, who have gone on strike, will be given one more day to return to work. “If they do not come back, then we will work out the action to be taken,” he said.
On the other hand, the representatives of the striking DBCs claimed that their demand for regularisation was justified as there were a number of court rulings in their favour.
The last time the DBCs went on strike over the issue was in 2008 when they did not report for work for 47 days. That was also the year when the number of dengue cases were much higher than 2007.
A couple of months ago, the sanitation employees had gone on strike and forced the MCD to agree to their regularisation as the civic agency had to take care of the Commonwealth Games preparations. The DBCs too are said to be hoping for a bonanza with Games around the corner.
In the House, the BJP councillors alleged that the Delhi government’s reluctance to give funds to the MCD had led to a cash crunch due to which the civic agency cannot regularise the DBCs. The Congress councillors, however, alleged that the MCD diverted funds meant for sanitation department to get the bio-metric system installed.
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