Shimla stinks as SEHB workers continue strike

SHIMLA: As Shimla Environment, Heritage Conservation and Beautification (SEHB) society workers are on strike, residents are forced to live in stink for around a week now as no one collects garbage form their doorsteps and the garbage bins in the city are overflowing."I have kept all the trash inside my house from the last six days as nobody comes to collect garbage. I am worried as keeping the trash in house for long may affect the health of my children. The overflowing garbage bins placed by the roads are already spreading diseases and there is also no one to a check on the monkeys and stray dogs that spread the garbage everywhere leaving no space to walk also," said Geeta, a local resident.Around 530 SEHB workers have decided to continue their strike, which has already completed six days now after Shimla Municipal Corporation (SMC) refused to fulfill workers' demand of regularizing them. SMC, however, on Monday warned the workers to stop the strike and resume work else they would be suspended and replaced with new workers. The SMC has already started employing new workers from last Sunday.SEHB workers' union's president Rangeela Ram alleged that despite being the communist leaders who claim to fight for rights of the poor, Shimla's mayor Sanjay Chauhan and deputy mayor Tikender Singh Panwar had also backstabbed them as they were neglecting their demands now. He said that the workers had been working for beautification of the city for six years. "But what about the demand of these workers, they just want themselves to get merged with SMC as they are working for it only. We would approach Himachal Pradesh chief minister Virbhadra Singh to raise the issue and will also expose that how SMC have neglected us and is now snatching our jobs by employing new workers," said Ram. Panwar said that they could have agreed to workers' demand of increasing their wages but they could not agree to their demand of regularising them by including SEHB under SMC. "If workers do not step back, we will have to employ new workers to maintain cleanliness in city and we have already received more than 50 applications for that," he added.