The Jamia University, located in Okhla area of Delhi, has fired 23 sanitation workers, all belonging to Valmiki community.
One of them, Rajesh Kumar Valmiki, flayed the decision of Jamia administration to fire them via a video. He said they had been working there for almost 15-20 years and even during the challenging time of Covid pandemic, they had been serving the college.
Rajesh said that when the time came to reduce the number of workers, they were the first to be terminated. He also showed the termination list.
Rajesh said the majority of the employees had passed 10th and 12th but were given works such as cleaning of sewage. The workers did not receive their salary for the past 3-4 months, he said.
Many of them live in rented houses and don’t have food to even feed their children. “Now, how can we recharge our phones?,” one of them asked.