Overview

• Mumbai’s sanitation workforce suspended its planned July 23 strike after BMC Commissioner Bhushan Gagrani assured them that no jobs would be cut and their demands would be met.
• Gagrani pledged to regularise 8,000 contract sweepers, fill vacancies among the 31,000 sanctioned positions and recognise all cleaning staff under the 2023 state resolution.
• A binding agreement to codify workforce retention and the Lad-Page committee’s operational recommendations is due by July 28.
• The dispute erupted after the BMC floated a May 14 tender to outsource door-to-door and open-area waste collection and transportation in 22 wards to private contractors.
• Mumbai generates around 7,000 tonnes of waste daily, managed by a fleet of roughly 1,334 vehicles, most of which are supplied under the current contract model.