Days after the Delhi government regularised services of 700 contractual Delhi Jal Board employees, the Aam Aadmi Party hit out at the BJP-run municipal corporations for giving Domestic Breeding Checkers (DBC) “false hopes of permanent jobs”.
“Whenever communicable diseases spread, like chikungunya and malaria, the DBCs are responsible to control mosquito breeding. They are required to carry out door-to-door inspections to check for stagnant water, or breeding hubs. During the entire coronavirus pandemic, they put their lives at stake and worked tirelessly. Every worker has a dream to have job security wherever they are appointed,” AAP MLA Somnath Bharti said.
Recently, leader of the house in South Delhi Municipal Corporation, Inderjeet Sehrawat had made a proposal to regularise services of over 1,100 DBCs in the civic body.
Pointing out that an official designation of a DBC doesn’t exist on paper, Bharti said no serious efforts had been made to regularise them over the past 22 years. “There are 3,500 such workers in all three MCDs and they have been working on a contract for past 22 years… Every year we see spread of dengue, malaria, and chikungunya, when services of these DBC workers become a necessity. The MCD has also accepted that the age group of these employees ranges from 40-50 years, and they are not fit for any new jobs either,” Bharti said.
Delhi BJP spokesperson, Praveen Shankar Kapoor, meanwhile, blamed the state government. “Services of not only DBCs but thousands of other employees should’ve been regularised long back but MCDs couldn’t do it due to the Kejriwal government withholding funds for 7 years. Earlier, funds were withheld by the Congress regime…,” he said.