No safety gears or gumboots, they do it their own way

Thiruvananthapuram: The irrigation canal at Kalady is shallow. But the stagnant water in it is thick and dark. It is a muck pit remotely resembling a water body and the stench makes everyone around the canal retch but not the two men who are at work trying to clear the filth. A thorthu, stiffened from long and hard use is their outfit. No masks, safety gears, gloves or even gumboots. They do it their own way.
“When we do this work, we don't eat . We just have some tea in the morning and skip food till evening. We bathe twice or maybe three times using some antiseptic at night and try to eat some dinner. That may not be possible though, no matter how much we are used to handling dirt and smell, we don't feel like gulping down food,” says Maniyan, a bony man in his late 50s. He has been into cleaning water bodies in panchayats and civic bodies in the district for the last two decades. In the past five years, the demand for these labourers has soared with departments undertaking projects to clean water bodies.

Their daily income has doubled over the years. Maniyan along with his partner Sudarshan earn Rs 1,000 a day for cleaning water bodies. “One thing you can be sure is that there won’t be any dearth of work, because people hardly learn and they would keep dumping their trash in water bodies. It means more work for us, but jokes aside, we wish people didn't do that anymore,” said Sudarshan.

Although machines have been introduced in the work, manual labourers are still indispensable. The mini earth mover would pluck away the shrubs and pick up the trash from the canal. People like Maniyan will have to step in and collect the leftovers or as they call it ‘prepare the ground for work’. In 2016, 11 labourers had to work neck deep in Amayizhanjan canal for more than a week, when district administration cleaned the canal as part of Operation Anantha.