By Sushmita Dey
Meerut Cantt, January 25: Metro rail construction workers at Gandhi Bagh Road, Meerut, working 12 hours days, amid heavy rainfall and extreme cold, said that they are not paid on time.
“It’s been two months, and I haven’t received my monthly salary,” said Kaushik. Other workers also complained of poor living conditions and irregular payments.
The contract workers are working on the 82.15 km Delhi-Meerut Regional Rapid Transit System (Delhi-Meerut RRTS), an under-construction metro rail that connects Delhi, Ghaziabad and Meerut.
Hailing from different parts of India, the workers are not directly contracted by the National Capital Region Transport Corporation (NCRTC) but hired by contractors such as Sunshine Ltd. and Shree Shyam Company.
Mukesh Rajbar, a grinding machine operator from Varanasi, said, “Every day, we work here for 12 hours from 8 am to 8 pm. We live in a room covered up with tin sheets near the construction site.”
“After work, we come back to the room, cook or buy our dinner and go to sleep exhausted,” he added.
“There are more than 100 workers with me. Some are locals, and some are from other villages near Uttar Pradesh. If one of us gets sick, we cover for him too,” said Mukesh Rajbar.
“After every two to three months, our worksite locations change. Earlier, I was working at Begumpul and Baghpat Road,” said Mohit Kaushik, a Crane Operator, Kharboda Chandpura.
Abhishek Kumar, working at the metro construction site at Roorkee Road for the past two years, said, “We have to work in extreme temperatures. When there is work, we have to get it done, right?”
When asked how often they visit their family, Mukesh Rajbar said, “We take contracts according to our convenience. It can be six months or eight months per year, then we go back to our village, spend time with our family for a month and then come back for a new contract.”
Besides this, Mohit Kaushik explained how the metro work would not be finished by the end of 2022 as predicted by the officials, “At the Gandhi Bagh Road, the metro work has just begun. It will take more than two years to complete. It doesn’t matter when they announce this project until and unless we start the micro-tunnelling technique - used for constructing smaller tunnels for utility diversion for the metro lines - the work will never be completed.
The metro will run from Hazrat Nizamuddin Sarai Kale Khan metro station, covering Ashok Nagar, Anand Vihar, Sahibabad, Ghaziabad, Guldhar, Duhai, Muradnagar, Modi Nagar South, Modi Nagar North, Meerut South, Shatabdi Nagar, Begumpul with Modipuram at the end.
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