Rachna Seth New Delhi, June 3 Hundreds of workers and students of Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD), Kashmere Gate, held a protest on Monday against the termination of services of 40 contractual sanitation employees. The university had outsourced class IV workers through Sulabh International, an NGO. Sources said the NGO had not been extending the facilities of employees' state insurance (ESI) and provident funds (PF) to the workers. After the new audit of the government, the university administration floated an open tender, which went to Bhagwati Enterprises. The new agency offered the ESI and PF facilities to the workers on the condition that it would hire its own labour. The university administration had decided to adjust these workers in three of its campus - Kashmere Gate, Karampura and Lodhi Road. All 10 women workers would continue their job on the Kashmere Gate campus. "We are working here for the past seven to eight years. We are familiar with the campus," said Suny, one of the workers whose services have been terminated. He said the workers did not want to be relocated. "All of us are on contract. Earlier, we were not given any gazetted holidays. It was only after protest that we were given selective holidays," Pramod Kumar, a worker, who had just joined the work for being jobless for three years. "We have to face harassment many times. The university administration does not give us fair treatment. Most of us are uneducated and want to give education to our children so that they do not have to go through this," said Sunny. The Dalit Bahujan Adivasi Collective accused the deputy registrar of misbehaving with these workers. However the deputy registrar refused the allegations. For the past one year, some university students are protesting the manual scavenging and demanding that no one should access sewers without personnel protective equipment. They had raised the issue with the deputy registrar, but he said the cleaning of sewers and manholes was not manual scavenging, said Anup, a PhD student. "It's a people-friendly university. We had asked Sulabh International many times to provide other facilities to the workers. For the past three months we had been informing about the tender to the old agency. The new agency began its work on Saturday with new workers. We are trying to ensure all the possibilities to provide livelihood to them," said Registrar MS Farooqi.

Stay updated with all the Delhi Latest News headlines here. For more exclusive & live news updates from all around India, stay connected with NYOOOZ.