Gurgaon: At 8am every morning, 55-year-old Durga Das, an MCG sanitation worker, arrives armed with a broom and a waste cart and gets to work in Sector 23A. It’s a ritual the colony has of late started to look forward to and residents can’t thank Durga enough. For three months now, Durga has been single-handedly cleaning over 2km of internal roads. What was once a three-member MCG sanitation team has been reduced to one. Durga sweeps the roads, gathers waste, loads it into a cart and drags it to the dumping point, all within an eight-hour shift. She pauses a few times in between and catches her breath before resuming work. “It is not easy,” she says. Her husband, who was once part of the same sanitation team, retired 10 months ago. Since then, staffing shortages have worsened. Despite repeated requests to her supervisor for additional help, Durga says she has only been given assurances. So she sweeps continuously, silently bearing the gruelling shift, and returns the next day to do it all over again. “I have been working alone for the past few months. It is exhausting to do it all alone,” says Durga hesitantly, adding, “Residents complain but now they know that I am working all alone.” Durga has been working as a sanitation worker in Gurgaon for 11 years; her husband too. What was once a three-member sanitation team has been reduced to a single woman now. Durga sweeps the roads, gathers waste, loads it into a cart and drags the heavy load to the dumping point all within an eight-hour shift. She pauses in between and catches her breath under the shade of a tree before she resumes work.“It is not easy,” she admits. Her husband, who was once part of the same sanitation team, retired ten months ago. Since then, staffing shortages have worsened. Despite repeated requests to her supervisor for additional help, Durga says she has only been given assurances, the most recent being that reinforcements would arrive after Makar Sankranti. She sweeps, lifts waste, loads it, pulls the cart to the dumping point and does it all again the next day. Bhawani Shankar Tripathy, a resident of Sector 23 A, said, “She has often broken down in front of RWA members, seeking sympathy. RWA has also advised residents to co-operate. MCG sanitation inspectors do not respond to our complaints on the issue. The answer from sanitation inspectors is ‘where should we get staff from?’ The question remains: what is MCG’s accountability to citizens in matters of sanitation? She works sincerely. I have seen Durga and her husband working for our sector for four to five years till 2024, when another private agency came in..” An MCG official said, “We are trying to streamline the system and have sent the additional requirements of the sanitation staff through different contracts, including sweeping staff contracts. We are working consistently to improve the system.”
