Saurabh Malik
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, December 24
The move of the UT Administration to scrap "manual dumping carts" or rehris involved in door-to-door garbage collection today came under the judicial scanner with the vacation Bench of the Punjab and Haryana High Court putting the Administration on notice on a petition questioning the new "motorised" system.
Seeking directions for junking the system that "illegally" prevented the garbage collectors in the city from earning their daily livelihood, the petitioners claimed hundreds of garbage collectors in the city would be rendered jobless and left in the lurch.
The petition, filed by Shamsher Singh and 28 other petitioners through counsel APS Shergill and HS Seth, was placed before Justice Lisa Gill's Bench. Issuing a notice of motion for January 6, Justice Gill asserted: "The question of maintainability of the writ petition, needless to say, shall remain open. It is open to the petitioners to agitate the question of interim relief on the next date of hearing".
The petitioners urged the court to issue directions, calling upon the UT and other respondents to show cause how and why the policy mandating the replacement of rehris with motorised door-to-door garbage collection vehicles was set to be enforced without hearing/involving the stakeholders or without even conducting a public hearing necessary under Article 14.
Claiming that the move was in complete defiance of their basic fundamental rights, the petitioners also prayed for a stay and directions for restraining the respondents on the ground that door-to-door garbage collection was their only means of employment and source of income in the economically challenging times of corona and otherwise.
"The respondents recently swung into action restraining the petitioners from pursuing their day-to-day business through coercive tactics to snatch the livelihood of poor collectors engaged in this business for generationshellip;," the petitioners stated.
Their counsel added that the petitioners were mostly members of the Scheduled Castes/Backward Classes engaged in this activity since birth and had no other source of livelihood. The work was being given to the MC, which was "infamous for its incompetence".
'Collectors will be rendered jobless'
Seeking directions for junking the system that "illegally" prevented the garbage collectors in the city from earning their daily livelihood, the petitioners claimed hundreds of garbage collectors in the city would be rendered jobless and left in the lurch.
from The Tribune https://ift.tt/3pocGAM
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