Tension gripped Faridkot on Tuesday as an administration team, moving to comply with Punjab and Haryana High Court directives, ran into stiff resistance from striking sanitation workers while attempting to clear garbage piled up across the city over the past 13 days.

The sanitation workers, part of a state-wide agitation by Punjab's municipal workers, have kept door-to-door collection and civic sanitation operations suspended for nearly two weeks, allowing waste to accumulate on roads, in residential colonies and market areas. Officials estimate more than 300 metric tonnes of uncollected solid waste now lies scattered across the city, affecting over a lakh residents.

The High Court, acting on a public interest litigation over the mounting health hazard, had directed the state government and local municipal bodies to ensure all garbage across Punjab's cities is cleared by July 22. Days earlier, exasperated local residents and social organisations had also issued their own ultimatum to the administration, warning that if the waste was not lifted by the same deadline, they would collect it themselves and dump it outside the residences of local MLAs and administrative offices in protest.

Acting on the court's orders, administrative officials reached the city's dumping sites and key intersections on Tuesday with private JCB machines and tractor-trolleys to resume waste lifting. However, members of the Municipal Workers' Union staged sit-ins and formed human chains around the vehicles, blocking the operation at several points and forcing it to a halt. With the standoff threatening to spiral, the administration deployed a heavy police contingent at the sites to prevent any breakdown of law and order.

We have to make compliance of High Court orders at any cost, said Amrit Lal, executive officer of the MC Faridkot.

Union leaders maintained that the administration's move to force waste collection through outside labour amounted to an infringement of their right to peaceful protest, and said the strike would continue until the state government met their demands — including regularisation of contractual workers, filling of vacant posts, timely disbursal of salaries and improved health cover.

Kuldeep Kumar, a union representative said the court's intervention, while aimed at public health, ignored the meagre wages and precarious conditions of contractual sanitation staff.

Health officials and residents, meanwhile, voiced growing concern over the spread of vector-borne and waterborne diseases such as dengue, malaria and cholera from the decaying waste, particularly with the monsoon underway. The local administration said further steps would follow in line with the High Court's directions to restore civic order in the city.