​​“No one has a way of speaking to us, the language is just very disrespectful. If we touch a chair we are told, ‘Move, get back, why are you standing here?’ They speak to us as though there is filth on our hands. Once when my husband passed someone a flask of water, he was told, how dare you touch this bottle? They aren’t embarrassed to speak to us this way.” AISHWARYA AMRITVIJAYRAJ reports from Burari:

The sit-in staged by sanitation workers at the government run Burari hospital in the month of January was triggered by a number of reasons, the prime ones being: delayed wage payment, payment of wages below the minimum wage, and sexual assault by the contract company manager and three supervisors.

Almost 125 sanitation workers were employed as contract laborers with the Burari hospital; half of them participated in the sit-in. After the protest, their salaries were eventually released on January 19; much later than expected. Until recently, Global Venture was the contractor providing sanitation workers at the hospital. This was earlier handled by Karthik Enterprises.

Mandvi, a woman activist with the SKU (Safai Kamgar Union) recalled:

“In July, the salary the workers received was roughly nine thousand, and the workers protested this on their own. They were told their salary would be increased to fourteen thousand. However, no one received the said amount. Falsely marking them absent, not calling them for work, all of these practices prevailed. In November, they again staged a protest, this time with the workers’ union. This was when they reached out to us regarding guidance and expressed that they needed to do something about their situation.”

The workers protested together with the SKU to demand being paid the minimum wage. According to Mandvi, “We used the passbook of the workers to calculate how much lower their received wage was compared to the minimum wage. The MD, Ashish Goyal, put out a notice assuring them of a minimum wage and payment of the due amount. The workers also demanded blacklisting of the current company, Global Ventures. However no action was taken.”


39-year-old Rani Devi works in the hospital’s sanitation department at Burari. Her spouse is employed by the hospital as a sanitation worker as well. The household is managed by the two earning members of the family. She began her employment at this hospital on day one, even during the covid era. Burari Hospital was established four years ago, during the covid pandemic.

The ground reality of sanitation workers is exposed in Rani Devi’s statements. “Karthik Enterprises also did not give us full days of duties: some got 18, some 15, some 20 days of work. We were not even aware of our salary amount.” She has worked for this company for four years, yet they have never paid her a full month’s salary. She says, “During covid I did full duties in the ICU, cleaning stools, vomiting, and I still did not receive the full amount.”

At least 16 sanitation workers died while carrying out sanitation services in New Delhi hospitals in just two months of the year 2020. “In the first month after Global Venture’s coming in, some received seven thousand, some eight thousand,” says Rani Devi. “We were kept waiting for 15 days or a month for the salary. My husband also did not receive his due pay.”

The police and administration tagged the act of putting up Valmiki's photo at the sit-in site as “giving it a caste angle,” but Rani Devi brings out the casteist discrimination perpetrated on many workers everyday at their workplace. Most of the workers are from the Valmiki caste group.

“No one has a way of speaking to us; the language is just very disrespectful. If we touch the chair we are told ‘hato, piche ho, yahan kyun khade ho?’ (Move, get back, why are you standing here?) They speak to us as though there is filth on our hands. Once when my husband passed someone a flask of drinking water he was told, how dare you touch this bottle? They aren’t embarrassed to speak to us this way.”


Speaking about the sit-in she says, “They had issues with us, that we were not doing our work for the hospital during the sit-in. But we don’t have any security: the pattern is that we work a few months and then we are made to sit at home. We were pressured into signing a document saying we agreed to work for 14,000 and that we have been receiving the full amount.”

According to Mandvi, “After the health minister’s assurance on minimum wage to the workers, in the month of January 2024, a notice was put up asking sanitation workers to produce a tenth-class pass certificate. For so-called unskilled labor like sanitation work an educational qualification is not the requirement. Later, workers were asked to individually produce a letter stating the reasons they do not hold the tenth-class certificate. Different pressure tactics were used. They were told that those holding the certificate will receive minimum wage. But the workers did not agree.

“This was followed by the salary delay, when they were told that there was a technical glitch, but other contractual workers like the security staff, nursing staff etc. did receive their salaries. It was very obvious they did not want to pay… On January 15, two workers were transferred out as part of the tactic. When the workers protested, the transfer was withheld but the salary was still not delivered. Half a month passed and with no salary, the workers first stated their needs and then told them that they would be left with no option but to stage a sit-in, and stop working without pay. Half of the sanitation workers stopped working. They were asked not to raise slogans since it is a silent zone but they could sit peacefully,” says Mandvi.


Ladoo Devi, a 45-year-old hospital sanitation worker, is a native of Madhubani in Bihar. Her spouse is mentally and psychologically ill and has mobility problems as a result of leg injuries. She is the only source of income. “I have had my three daughters married, using my income and taking loans. We live under a tirpaal (tarp). Everybody takes advantage of those in need.” On her duties during the pandemic she recalls, “During covid I was made to work the whole month, in ICU duty, cleaning the patients’ waste from the bathrooms, washing the bedclothes, and when I pleaded to be given my full salary money, they said these are the orders from above.”

Even though Rani Devi and Ladoo Devi were among the frontline employees working in hospitals during the pandemic and amongst those most exposed to Covid and other risks, their employers did not repay them with dignified pay or treatment for their work. The Burari hospital contractor at the time even hired supervisors to oversee them who had a formal complaint of sexual harassment pending against them.

Ladoo Devi was among the numerous sanitation employees that appealed to the hospital administration against the appointment of the supervisors. A group of women expressed in a letter to the Global Venture managing director Ashish Goyal in November last year saying that they were uncomfortable working with the new supervisors, who had a formal complaint against them for sexual misconduct with a member of the nursing staff. According to Ladoo Devi, “They still got the entry.”

Speaking about the supervisors’ corruption she recalls, “In December I went back to my village since my daughter was facing some health related issues. They were asking for 3000 back saying that I had received a salary with a 17,000 wage frame.” However, she refused to pay. “I said, ‘I will not be able to pay the amount, I have to pay for my daughter’s marriage.’ He then began abusing me and threatening to have me transferred to a different hospital. I told him, ‘I have worked here during Covid, I am unlettered, I cannot read bus numbers or boards and do not have the resources to travel to Indira Gandhi hospital.’”

The same evening she was transferred.

Shweta Devi, a 40 year old migrant worker from Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, has been a sanitation worker at the Burari hospital since November, and recalls how, in order to get a job at the hospital, Rani Devi and other sanitation workers were asked to pay money underhand of about 40 thousand rupees. Driven by their need for incomes and their socioeconomic situation, they complied.

Shweta Devi did not have money. She says, “I cried and requested them to give me the job.” Not long after the appointment, however, supervisor Raj Kumar began calling her into his office without giving a reason. He asked her to “cooperate” with him and later, to bring other women employees to his office. He told her that if she asked questions or told anyone, she might lose her job.

“Sir said, meri marzi jab bulaun tab aao (It’s up to me and when I call, you come), you cannot cut my call, you have to come. Sabko khush rakhna aur aaram se duty karna warna duty se nikaal denge (Keep everyone satisfied and do your duty without fussing or we’ll dismiss you). He asked me, tumhare mein sex kitna hai? I recorded the conversation and one such call. Whenever Raj Kumar called, she would urge her sister-in-law to go with her. However, one of the supervisors stopped her sister-in-law, and the two of them stood there. Feeling anxious about the circumstances, Shweta Devi informed her husband and co-workers about her situation.

According to Mandvi, “An ICC was hastily formed; we are calling it bogus because the report produced by the ICC was made in just a day, and the minutes of the report were leaked. There has never been any training given to the workers about how to access it.” Section 19 of The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act of 2013 requires every employer to “organize workshops and awareness programmes at regular intervals for sensitising the employees with the Act.”

Rani Devi is one of 15 people against whom the hospital administration has filed an FIR after the January sit-in, accusing them of damage to government property, unauthorized gathering, instigating other workers not to perform their duties and disrupting sanitation services. She responds, “They say we have caused damage to government property. I’d like to know what we have damaged. It’s they who have seized our belongings, our blankets, clothes, and other such items. Even Valmiki Baba’s photo was removed; we asked for an answer but none of them gave us a logical answer. MD Sir was present when all of this was happening.”

The contractor has removed Rani Devi from her job and she is currently unemployed. She is facing trouble managing her household expenses. She is a mother to two school-going children and her aging mother-in-law has high blood sugar and high blood pressure. “I am asked to produce a police verification to the administration; I only just submitted it in November when I rejoined work.”

On January 17 when the workers stopped working, came shiftwise, punched in for attendance and sat in the corner near the reception, they were not disrupting anything. “No complaints from patients or locals were expressed, understanding the workers’ socioeconomic vulnerabilities they were empathetic,” says Mandvi. When the police came, the workers made it clear that they were sitting peacefully for their wages, and if they received the wages they would resume work. “Women asked the police to not support the harassers. They have been demanding since November to blacklist the company, assure a minimum wage, and a back record of non-payment of minimum wages.”

Rani Devi says, “Many of us were sitting but some of those who were aware, demanded and voiced for our rights were especially targeted.”

According to Harish Gautam, member of the executive committee of the Safai Kamgar Union, “The MD, Mr Ashish Goyal, has sent out a notice inviting new bidders; Global Venture is on the blacklist. One requirement is that the company must pay its employees the minimum wage.”

After a recent meeting with the health minister, he says, the minister assured them he would get a report from the labour commissioner. On February 6, the labor commissioner visited the hospital. “The new supervisor sent 25 workers before him: they were those who were under his pressure or under threat of losing their job. Their signatures were recorded saying they had received full wages. This is false; we have the passbooks to prove it.” Rani Devi and Ladoo Devi have spoken similarly about the report-making process.

The series of events that happened and are still ongoing puts us in a place to question if sanitation workers, migrant laborers and working women from oppressed backgrounds can exercise their human rights. The fact that a number of sit-ins against bullying and discrimination occurred in the same month that the talk of the town was the ‘Ram Mandir Praan Pratishtha’ events speaks volumes about the kind of society we live in.

Names of the sanitation workers have been changed to maintain their privacy.

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