Waste piles up in Gajwel market as workers strike work demanding salaries

Garbage has piled up at Gajwel’s Integrated Vegetable Market after 22 sanitation and other staff members stopped work over non-payment of salaries for seven months. Vendors and customers face inconvenience as the marketing department awaits grants to clear their pending salary bills

Siddipet: Garbage has piled up in all corners of the Integrated Vegetable Market in Gajwel as sanitation workers and other staff went on strike over non-payment of their salaries for more than seven months.

The market was built on six acres and 24 guntas of land when the BRS was in power at a cost of Rs 22.85 crore. Local MLA and then Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao inaugurated the market in 2019. It has 245 stalls where farmers from neighbouring villages sell vegetables. The meat market and other stalls in Gajwel market are visited by hundreds of people from the town and neighbouring villages.

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While 16 women sweepers used to keep the market clean, four security personnel guarded the premises and two others supervised the overall functioning of the market until a week ago. However, the 22 staff members launched a protest as they had not received their salaries for the past seven months. According to the workers, they used to work under an agency that paid them regular salaries until a year ago.

However, the marketing department decided to pay their salaries directly, avoiding the agency’s involvement. Although salaries were paid for a few months, the department stopped payments to the workers about seven months ago. As they received no response from officials despite repeated appeals, the workers launched a protest, refusing to attend work.

The workers said they had no alternative source of income other than their salaries. As the marketing department failed to make alternative arrangements for sweeping the market, waste has piled up, causing serious inconvenience to vendors and customers. They urged the department to resolve the issue by clearing the pending salaries without further delay.

Market Secretary Usha said the bills pertaining to the workers’ salaries were pending with the Finance Department. She said the payments would be cleared once the department received the grants.