DMK’s neglect of sanitation workers’ protests exposes its betrayal of social-justice principles

“It’s been nearly fifty days since we last went to work. No work means no pay. And now, we have nothing left,” Ashraf Banu told me when I met her outside Rajarathinam Stadium in Chennai on 18 September 2025. She was part of a protest that included more than a thousand sanitation workers, who had marched nearly four kilometres from Langs Garden Road. “I can’t even afford my rent and neither can are the others. How are we supposed to survive?” she said, visibly frustrated with the government’s response to their ongoing agitation.

Following the march, a meeting was held where leaders from the Left Trade Union Centre and other unions called on the state government to restore the workers to the same positions they had held before the protests began. The protest was the latest edition of an ongoing struggle against the outsourcing of waste-collection work in two zones of the Greater Chennai Corporation. Worker representatives spoke fervently, warning the government of political consequences with the 2026 Tamil Nadu Assembly elections approaching.

Among the workers who addressed the gathering was Ashraf, who highlighted how they had received no pay since the protest started over one and a half months ago and that the government must reinstate them under the National Urban Livelihoods Mission. The workers’ protest started on 1 August, when the sanitation work of zones 5 and 6—Thiru Vi Ka Nagar and Royapuram respectively—of the GCC was handed over to Delhi MSW Solutions of the Ramky Group. The contract, worth Rs 2,363 crore for ten years, includes the door-to-door collection of segregated waste, and street and footpath cleaning.

Most of the workers are Dalits, mainly from the Arunthathiyar community. “Once the jobs are under a contract, the workers lose job security and safety. They will be exploited, as is already the case with current sanitation workers employed under private contractors,” Pulianthope Mohan, an activist and lawyer who has been supporting the protest, told me. He added that privatising sanitation work all but ensures that future generations of Dalit communities will be forced to take up this work. “I myself would have ended up collecting garbage and sweeping the roads if I had not received enough education to become a lawyer. If the government does not support them and instead leaves these workers at the mercy of private contractors, the children will end up doing the same jobs as their parents,” he said.