Daijiworld Media Network - Bengaluru (DC)

Bengaluru, Apr 8: Congress president Rahul Gandhi who is on his fifth round of visit to Karnataka ahead of Assembly polls on Sunday April 8 interacted with a group of safai karamcharis (sanitation workers) and promised to abolish contractual employment all over India if the Congress wins the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

Gandhi is in Bengaluru to address the last day of his Janaarshirvada Yatra. In a meeting which lasted for nearly 15 minutes near Mantri Mall in Malleswaram, Gandhi said, "If we get to govern in Delhi, we will learn from Karnataka," in response to Oblesh, a civic worker, who told him that Karnataka government was the only Indian state to have abolished the contract system.

During the meeting, the sanitation workers said that Congress government led by Siddaramaiah had hiked their wages which has benefited nearly two lakh sanitation workers.

Interacting with them further, Gandhi said, "The person doing the most difficult work should be rewarded the most. The problem in India, the person doing the most difficult work is not rewarded and the person doing the easiest work is rewarded. That's what the Congress party wants to change."

During the meeting, the sanitation workers hailed the state government for responding to their demands. On the occasion, they also said that sanitation workers were yet to be made permanent employees of the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), the city's municipal corporation to which CM Siddaramaiah informed Rahul that the government had started the process of making sanitation workers permanent.

It may be recalled that in 2017, the Karnataka government had announced the abolition of the contract system for sanitation workers, who are mostly Dalits, after the workers took to the streets demanding direct payment of wages.

Prior to the interaction with the sanitation workers, the Congress scion garlanded a statue of his father, former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in Malleswaram.