There are approximately five million sanitation workers engaged either full time or part
time work.
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Sanitation-workers-death
Image Credit- Zeenews
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How many Sanitation workers die?
Two men died in October 2020 while cleaning a “safety tank” inside a gold chain factory in northwest Delhi. The men alleged they were not equipped with protective gear such as masks, safety belt and boots, and died after inhaling poisonous gases.
There have been instances where
sanitation workers lost their lives and faced inhumane conditions at the social front nut from the administrative front. One state after
another has the tragic death of sanitation workers in septic tanks.
Since 1993, when the first law was
passed against manual cleaning, there were at least 144 worker deaths in Tamil
Nadu as of November 2018, according to official data reported to the Centre for
grant of compensation. Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, and Punjab also fared badly
with a cumulative toll of 146 lives lost during that period.
But this is obviously a gross
underestimate, since the Safai Karmachari Andolan, which has litigated in the
Supreme Court seeking to aggressively prosecute offenders, contends that septic
tank cleaning claimed nearly 1,500 lives between 2014 and 2016. More reports of
deaths continue to come in.
What causes the death of Sanitation workers?
Public Understanding of the science of managing
septic tanks continue to be poor.
The availability of cheap labor to clean these structures has slowed efforts to
develop technologies that can safely remove and transport waste.
For the task
of cleaning the tanks, indigenous innovation in robotics looks promising but
are not adopted at the national level.
The contractor feels free to exploit
the worker, conveniently hopping over whatever barriers and checks, including
digital derives that the government attempts to use for providing financial
security to the worker.
As for training, no one seems to
believe that sanitation involves complex work, requiring both knowledge and
practice. Sanitation campaigns do not articulate an acknowledgment of the
relationship between the caste system and cleaning jobs. An ideological barrier
prevents such articulation.
The media, too, does not highlight the
connection between caste and cleaning. That is why whenever sanitation workers
die in underground drains, the news simply passes into sorted history.
There are nine kinds of sanitation
work that exists across the sanitation value chain in urban and rural India.
These range from the cleaning of
septic tanks to maintaining and troubleshooting sewer networks in urban areas,
cleaning and maintaining public and community toilets, cleaning household
latrines, cleaning public drains that often have fecal waste along with other
hazardous materials.
These types of sanitation work vary
significantly on the types of risks that workers encounter, the mode of
employment – government, contractual, or daily wage based – and the
remuneration. Any strategy to improve the situation of sanitation workers must
take into account this diversity.
Why do Sanitation workers join the job when ‘hiring
is a crime’?
Every death of a manual worker represents a crime since the
Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act,
2013 makes the use of such labor to clean septic tanks an offense punishable
with imprisonment of two years or with a fine of ₹2 lakh or both even in the
first instance.
No person, local authority, or agency
can hire people for hazardous cleaning of sewers and septic tanks. The
employment of manual scavenging and construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition)
Act, 1993 was amended in 2013 to include a ban on employing or engaging people
to clean sewer and septic tanks.
On 2nd October 2014, Prime. Minister Narendra Modi announced to clean India by 2019. This was
launched on the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. The aim was to start a
nationwide initiative to inspire the public to voluntarily clean public spaces.
The filth in the nation was affecting tourism and health. So, clean India
could provide jobs to the poor due to tourism. It was intended. Massive publicity was
done, and it included various celebrities as well.
As a result, municipalities began
to employ more contractual labor.
Previously door to door service was
taken down in 1993 when workers used to collect latrine from door to door.
The Problem: A particular caste in
Manual Scavenging
The Swachha Bharat Mission supposed to
be secular in nature, but it has become casteist as scavenging is done by a
particular cast. Cleaning was supposed to be a volunteer service. This further
leads to some social problems. That particular caste was still treated as 'unhygienic' and 'impure.'
More than 300 people died due to
asphyxiation while working in septic tanks in the year 2017 alone.
The lack of credible data is the main
problem that does not help in policymaking. There is no official number of
employed in sewer and septic tank cleaning.
The hiring is on a casual basis; contractors do not follow the safety norms. Like providing gas masks, safety
harness belts, and helmets to them. The prescribed criteria remain only in papers.
Government’s Failure
Even after so many efforts by government – programmes like Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, Unsafe sanitation work, manual scavenging still exists in India.
What the Government should do?
Any
tangible achievement of clean India is possible when this social narrative
related to sanitary labor is critically addressed by caste
neutralization.
New
technologies from the west can be learned to work better in this segment as robots. People
who work in garbage collection are often taken from a particular caste, and
they are always treated unhygienic. So, the government should hire cleaning
agents from all communities.
Laws
should be regulated – Like punitive measure for open defecation, and
construction of a toilet in public places should be done. People
should be fined heavily if they throw garbage everywhere.
There
should be the cultivation of habits in schools that one should keep the garbage
inside bin.
Better safety equipment, mechanisms
for redressal of complaints should be provided. States should upgrade infrastructure
as soon as possible.
There
should be proper care for sanitation workers (Like more insurance and health
checkup, better mast, and dresses), as there have been deaths during manual
scavenging. According to the Ministry of social justice and empowerment in Lok
Sabha 2017.
The problem of “manual scavenging.”
as it is commonly called, it is not new and is deeply rooted in India’s caste the system, which assigns duties such as cleaning human fecal waste to
people born in the cast of the Dalit community. This practice itself humiliates
the rights.
A Conclusive Note
Sanitation workers are a valuable citizen
of the country and their safety, maintaining of data should be prioritized as these
are often poor people who join such jobs and lose their lives
The country needs to make this sanitation
drive of minds too where caste can be the cause of humiliation.
Their survivors
are not often compensated either. This is not a forgivable ignorance, every
life matters. Soon, the safety norms should be implemented.
Policymakers should focus on ‘implementing.’
the policies as well.
However, Last year, Tamil Nadu and some
other States, notably Andhra Pradesh and Odisha, announced plans to scale up
FSTP infrastructure. This is a task that deserves the highest importance and
needs to be completed on the deadline.
