Sweeping trouble: Over 26% sanitation staff given other jobs

Nagpur: More than a quarter — 26.5% — of Nagpur's 6,741 sanitation workers are engaged in duties unrelated to road sweeping, severely impacting the city's cleanliness. This contributed to Nagpur scoring zero in ‘Garbage-Free City' category of Swachh Bharat Survekshan exposing deep-rooted gaps in urban sanitation planning.

Of the total workforce, only 4,957 workers are assigned to sweep the city's 4,400km road network, while 1,153 workers are diverted to clerical or support roles across departments, and 631 more are assigned to sewerage maintenance. This leaves each sweeper responsible for nearly 0.9km of road, an unrealistic expectation, particularly in congested and high-waste-generating areas. Civic activists and union leaders repeatedly warned that this flawed deployment model is undermining the core function of solid waste management.

Gandhibagh zone, despite being the smallest in jurisdiction, has the highest number of sanitation workers at 849, with only 590 of them allotting sweeping job. This disproportionate staffing has raised eyebrows, especially since larger zones like Laxmi Nagar (605 workers, 408 sweepers) and Hanuman Nagar (622 workers, 438 sweepers) are managing with much less. Dharampeth has 812 workers, of which 539 are on sweeping duty, while Satranjipura (669 total) has 495 sweepers, indicating a slightly better match of resources to local demand.

Zones like Ashi Nagar (706 total, 612 sweepers) and Mangalwari (645 total, 533 sweepers) are more in line with sanitation requirements, though they too fall short of optimal deployment when accounting for rising population and commercial activity. The Dhantoli zone, with 520 workers and 466 sweepers, stands out for relatively efficient manpower usage but continues to suffer from overflowing bins and poor drain maintenance, possibly due to gaps in mechanised cleaning and secondary waste collection.

Nehru Nagar (687 total workers, 436 sweepers) shows a significant shortfall in sweeping coverage, despite having the fifth-highest workforce among the 10 zones. The misallocation in such zones, according to union representatives, is compounded by ‘ghost postings', where workers marked present on paper are either not reporting to duty or are assigned elsewhere without official orders.

Another major concern is diversion of 631 workers to public health engineering department to clear choked sewers. While sewer management is essential, the shifting of this responsibility to sanitation teams thinned out the workforce meant for visible, daily cleaning operations. The civic administration's decision to place sewerage under the health sanitation department, instead of the public health engineering wing, reportedly led to operational confusion and overburdening.

In Chhatrapati Nagar under the Laxmi Nagar zone, only six sanitation workers are deployed for an area divided into three booths, each covering approximately 1,100 residents. "At least 14 to 16 workers are needed here based on population and area," said a local resident Manohar Joshi. "But most workers are posted in civil departments where they do clerical work or sit idle. Their original appointment was for sanitation duties."

Even politically sensitive areas like South-West Nagpur are feeling the pinch. "Sweeping used to happen daily here, but now it's reduced to once every four days," a resident said, alleging that between 6 and 10 sanitation workers are posted in non-sanitation roles in many departments and sit idle using free Wi-Fi. "We raised these issues earlier too, but no corrective action has been taken yet," he added.

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