The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) has been on a month-long sanitation drive during which several specific areas of garbage pile-up are being targeted, including roads, footpaths, foot over-bridges, power transformers, abandoned vehicles, and electronic waste.
The foot soldiers who are assisting the corporation to its coveted position in the Swachh Bharat Mission for which the drive has been taken up, are sadly neglected. As the sanitation workers move the broom across the road, a fine cloud of dust rises and stays in the air. While passersby and motorists have the option to turn up their noses for a few seconds, the GHMC staff have no option but to breathe the dust-laden air.
Sanitation workers, field assistants and other workers involved in the drive are poorly equipped to handle the job in the biting cold of the winter, leave alone the rising pollution in the city. While the officials say that the workers are given protective gear, there is no evidence of the gear being used on the job, indicating lack of enforcement.
“I tie a scarf to protect my hair, and when there is a lot of dust, I tie one end of the scarf to cover my nose too. The department does not give masks,” says Manemma, a sanitation worker. Masks, gloves and even shoes are rarely seen on the workers lifting piled up trash or even construction debris as part of the drive.
GHMC offers a kit to the sanitation workers every year which contains radium jackets, raincoat, caps, shoes, gloves, sanitiser, soap and hair oil, besides N95 masks. However, the masks are rarely or never used.
“They give inferior quality shoes and masks, and too few for use the whole year. You cannot expect sanitation workers to spend on protective gear. The sanitiser bottle they give does not even last a few days,” says Udhari Gopal, president of the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Employees Union.
Enforcement is even more lax when it comes to adherence to protective gear when the workers are from outside GHMC. Masks, helmets and gloves are almost always missing during road laying works, though the agreement with contract agency mentions them in a perfunctory manner. Labourers were seen without masks and helmets even during repair works carried out to the GHMC corporate office in June last year.
Published – January 10, 2026 08:38 pm IST
