Hyderabad’s garbage collectors demand social security, dignity

Official recognition as essential workers, registra-tion, identity cards, and sett-ing up a helpline app to address workplace harass-ment were some demands from the garbage collectors of Hyderabad.
More than 500 garbage collectors met November 5 to highlight their pressing demands and the lack of their basic rights and entitlements as they keep the southern Indian city clean and healthy.
The meeting decided to present their de-mands as a memorandum to the Telangana chief mini-ster. The memorandum also demanded the garbage pi-ckers enumeration by the municipal and state labor department authorities.
The meeting was organi-zed by the Montfort Social Institute, India Network for Basic Income Foundation, and Work FREE, a research project based at the University of Bath, United Kingdom.
Brother Varghese Theckanath, director of the Montfort institute that hosted the convention.