A welfare board, better working conditions and fixed working hours were some of the suggestions made by Onkar Sharma, regional labour commissioner in the ministry of labour, to safeguard the rights of the workers in the waste management industry. Sharma said, “Merely calling the waste management industry as hazardous is not going to be enough.”

He opined that rag picking as an industry has three 'Ds' attached to it, viz. dirty, difficult and dangerous which itself should compel the government to make substantive rules for the people involved in the industry. “The safety and health consideration should be more detailed, merely stating that the workers will be provided gloves, shoes, masks is not enough,” he said.

Sharma was addressing the consultative meet on the formation of new municipal solid waste management (MSW) rules, 2013, which would supersede the earlier MSW rules formed in the year 2000. The meet was organised by centre for informal sector and labour studies (CIS & LS), Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and all India kabadi mazdoor mahasangh (AIKMM).

Sharma said that International Labour Organisation's 'decent workplace' programme has also been incorporated in the 12th five year plan to ensure a healthy and safe workplace for all the workers in the country.

The discussions in the meet hovered around the need to look into the conditions of contractual workers in the waste management sector and for safeguarding their rights. According to K K Niyogi, president of all India platform for labour rights, with around 3.5 lakh informal rag pickers in Delhi and over a crore in India, it is imperative that their health and working conditions become an important part of the government's agenda.

Niyogi said that the government should be the employer for waste management workers and rag-pickers and the rules drafted for waste management should be pro-workers and not pro-contractors.

The MSW draft rules 2013 give power to the municipal organisations to outsource the waste collection work to agencies. However, these agencies are not under any obligation for safeguarding worker's rights. A major contention to the rules raised in the consultation meet was that they give more powers to the contractors while taking the freedom of work away from the individual waste collectors.

“The contractors hardly provide salaries for 18-20 days of work to the workers and provide no other form of support,” said Pradeep Shinde, professor at CIS & LS, JNU.

The conference was attended by many dignitaries, including Jan Bremen, professor Emeritus, university of Amsterdam. Bremen spoke about the dismal conditions of workers uprooted from the city's slum and made to live in the outskirts in Ahmedabad, in a beautification drive of the city. He said, “We need these workers but we do not want them around us; they have been dumped in a temporary relocation site in Ganeshganj near Ahmedabad very close to a landfill where their only livelihood is rag picking. Only people who moved to the city before 1976 are given permanent accommodation,” he said.

“The accommodations are good, but where is the work?” Bremen asked.