Sacked Delhi women’s panel workers have little to cheer for this festive season

Delhi: Supporting a family of seven, Ashiya Khatoon waits for the festive season to finally bring some joy as she runs from pillar to post in search of work. It has been almost six months since she last received her salary.

Such is the scenario for the 567 workers engaged with the Delhi Commission for Women (DCW), as all of them were fired and left without work unceremoniously in the run-up to the festive season. To put matters into perspective, of the total workers, most work in the field, while 47 are contractual and 37 are outsourced.

Out of the entire flock, nobody has received an iota of payment from the national capital’s women’s commission, with salary arrears piling one on top of the other. No one in the entire workforce has received their share of payments since the last cycle of the contract expired in June. According to multiple contractual workers, they have been left in the dirt owing to a lack of transparency regarding when they will be provided with their share of pending payments.

Dearth Of Jobs

Many of the workers with the commission are widows, survivors of abusive households, sexual assault and acid attacks. Almost all of them have been employed at the commission due to a dearth of jobs in the market, without anyone to fend for them. Thus, the DCW had arrived as their sole hope in extremely dark times in their lives. On the other hand, the commission also served as a potent lifeline for the many survivors of abuse across the national capital. However, with the workforce dwindling and an ever-decreasing budget, there’s no one left to listen to the plight of women any longer.

According to reports, the DCW’s key initiatives, such as its Rape Crisis Cell, Sahyogini, and Crisis Intervention Cell, have recorded a slump in cases. The RCC or CIC dealt with about 950 cases between March and August in 2024, against an average of 1,100 cases in the corresponding months last year. On the other hand, the number of women assisted through the mobile helpline has also decreased, as they were only able to help 12,549 women out of the 26,046 aid requests received between March and August.

Presently, the phone calls made to the helpline fall on deaf ears, as the helpline has stopped working since the entirety of the workforce had their services ended. A singular lock hangs from outside the gates leading to the offices of the commission. A dingy corridor is all that remains of the commission, which was once filled with women waiting to get their pleas heard and their complaints filed. However, since the entire debacle, it has left survivors in disarray, alongside the contractual workers.

With most of the workers being the sole breadwinners for their families, they have nowhere else to go.

Out of these workers, Ashiya Khatoon, a 32-year-old acid attack survivor, had pledged her entire life to the DCW. She felt indebted to the commission solely because they employed her and helped her manage her seven-member household all by herself.

Before joining the Delhi Commission for Women, Khatoon faced the wrath of her in-laws when she was married off at a young age of 20. Constant taunts, jeers, and violent tendencies finally saw an end when her former husband splashed a bottle filled with acid on her face. “I had only asked for a divorce. After that incident, I was taken to the hospital by my brother, where they kept me for around two months. After that, I did not have any work, and I contacted the commission for help. They offered me a job then, around a decade ago,” she said.

With a salary of around Rs 12,000 and armed with a ration card, all she wanted to do was provide her siblings with a life that she could not lead. “We are a family of four brothers and three sisters, including me,” she said, adding, “I used to work as a contractual worker at the commission, where I would mostly be tasked with cleaning and managing files. However, they terminated my services right before Diwali, on October 21.”

“Moreover, I have yet to receive my salary since May,” she said.

Her contract was last renewed in May, after the completion of the three-month contract cycle. She remains in a rented room with her siblings in Savda, now with one less mouth to feed, as one of her brothers recently got married and now stays in Geeta Colony Delhi. That is the only relief that she has experienced in her life, but with her savings drying up, she fears taking to the streets will be the only option left for her by the end of the month.

“Nobody offers you a job with a disfigured face, especially during the festive season,” she said.

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Similarly, Kusum Devi, 34, faces a similar conundrum. Although married, the family is facing a massive financial issue. The DCW has not yet sent her share of arrears since February when her contract was last renewed. Presently, the commission has missed almost three of her contract cycles.

“My husband is unemployed at the moment, and the DCW has terminated my services. I don’t have any savings left anymore,” she said.

“We are still just getting by because I have not had to pay the rent for the past two months since the flat owner has been sympathetic. Even she is losing her patience now,” Kusum stated.

Faced with the same plight as Khatoon, Kusum is waiting for someone to employ her at the earliest. “Nobody has openings at the moment. Most places have asked me to contact them in February or March. I have knocked on the doors of multiple offices without any luck,” she said.

She was a focal cog in the machine, as she handled the maintenance department at the commission, earning a decent salary of Rs 25,000.

“It is because of my husband’s savings and my savings that we still have money to eat. Otherwise, we would have starved to death already,” she said.

‘Left In Limbo’

The program coordinator of the commission, Manish Kumar, has also found himself left in a loose end as his direct contract with the commission was ended abruptly, much like the others. He has also found himself working without payment since June, awaiting the resumption of services.

“The point is, they haven’t formally ended the services,” he explained, adding that everyone is now waiting for a ruling from authorities to determine the status of their contract. “Even after the Delhi High Court asked the government for an answer,” he said, “they still provided no response on our employment status.”

“We have literally been left in limbo,” he continued, as their contracts have technically ended, yet no one knows their actual employment status.

On the other hand, a field worker associated with one of the 81 NGOs assisting the commission said on the condition of anonymity that they have not received any payment from the Delhi Commission for Women either since February.

The DCW is typically expected to receive funding every three months, reportedly receiving its first instalment for the current fiscal year only in August, which was a grant-in-aid of about Rs 5.25 crore. The Delhi government had allocated a total of Rs 25 crore for the DCW this year, a significant decline from the Rs 35 crore allocated to the commission in the last financial year.

On the other hand, Rs 4.5 crore of the disbursed Rs 5.25 crore was to pay entities that worked for the DCW, but the amount is still being processed.