The day after Diwali saw cleaning services going slow as many sanitation workers took advantage of the restricted holiday on Friday for Govardhan Puja.
Delhi’s municipal corporations have a total of 60,000 sanitation workers, many of whom had taken the day off on Friday, while the amount of garbage on the streets seemed to multiply.
Sweeping the Capital’s streets clean of used firecrackers and packaging started on Friday, but the garbage would only be picked up over the weekend as the civic bodies did not have enough staff.
A North Delhi Municipal Corporation official said there weren’t enough safai karamcharis to finish all the cleaning on Friday. “The main roads have been swept, but the garbage will only be picked up in the next two days,” said the official.
On Thursday, the sanitary landfill sites closed early at 6 p.m., leaving trucks loaded with garbage waiting outside till Friday morning when operations resumed.
North Corporation Commissioner Pravin Kumar Gupta and other senior officers will conduct inspections on Saturday to make sure the sweeping is complete and provisions have been made to clear the garbage.
Cleaning by the South Delhi Municipal Corporation too went slow as about a quarter of the sanitation staff was on leave. “The staff strength was about 60 to 70 per cent on Friday. By Saturday evening, all the garbage should be transported to the landfills,” said SDMC spokesperson Mukesh Yadav.
He added that on Diwali the SDMC had collected 1,495 metric tonnes of garbage and on Friday the amount stood around 1,500 MT.
The East Delhi Municipal Corporation too experienced a staff crunch the day after Diwali, so much so that officers said it would take a couple of days for the streets to look clean.