A 37-year-old sanitation worker, hired by a private contractor, Krishan, lost his life on January 20 after he entered a drain in North Delhi’s Wazirabad area, attempting to unclog it with his bare hands, and without any safety gear. While the Delhi police registered a case against the contractor and Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal promised the deceased worker’s family ₹10 lakh and a job, the incident has left people asking — why are workers still being forced to clean drains and sewers manually?
What does the law say?
The Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013, notified on September 18, 2013, terms manual scavenging a “dehumanising practice” and aims to end the practice and the use of insanitary latrines. The Act states that “no person, local authority or agency” can construct an insanitary latrine and directly or indirectly employ a manual scavenger. It prohibits any person, local authority or agency from employing anyone for “hazardous cleaning of a sewer or septic tank,” the maximum punishment for which has been set at a two-year jail term and ₹2 lakh in fine. Besides the Act, the Delhi government came up with the Delhi Water Board Septage Management Regulations, 2018, to regulate the handling of sewage and make it safer for workers.
Have the laws been implemented?
Under the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013, the State governments are supposed to have a State-level monitoring committee as well as district-level vigilance committees. Though it is supposed to meet once in six months, the Delhi State Monitoring Committee, headed by the Chief Minister, held its first meeting ever on September 24, 2018.
After the meeting, Social Welfare Minister Rajendra Pal Gautam, who is also a member of the committee, admitted in a statement that manual scavenging had not stopped, as evident from the death of five workers cleaning a tank last September at Moti Nagar. He added that the implementation of the Act had not been effective. While the government issued orders to district magistrates and other officers to ramp up the implementation of the law, including the identification and rehabilitation of manual scavengers, people are still being made to enter drains and septic tanks to clean.
While issuing notice to the Delhi government in the Wazirabad case, the National Human Rights Commission on January 21 pulled up the authorities. “Despite legal provisions as well as the Supreme Court guidelines safeguarding the interest of sewerage cleaners, precious lives have been lost owing to the apparent lack of supervision and lackadaisical attitude of the authorities,” the NHRC observed.
What is the government doing?
According to Delhi government officials, private contractors or residents’ welfare associations continue to hire labourers to clean drains and septic tanks as they find it cheaper and more convenient than renting machines, which are not readily available. In the Wazirabad case, the police said the contractors had hired Krishan and other workers for ₹400 a day each.
Speaking to The Hindu this week, Mr. Gautam said mechanical cleaning of drains would help end the use of manual scavengers to a great extent. The Delhi Jal Board was in the process of procuring 200 sewer cleaning machines by March, he said.
But, he added, he was still worried about septic tanks and drains in Delhi’s slums and unauthorised colonies, where the narrow lanes would prevent the vehicles from entering.
He pointed out that the government was looking for technological solutions to the problem, besides planning to train manual scavengers to get other jobs.
A team of experts from the Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi, the Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology and the Delhi Technological University, as well as officers of the three municipal corporations of Delhi and the Delhi Jal Board, were expected to meet this month to discuss the solutions, he said.
Damini Nath