India¡¯s First ¡®Toilet College¡¯ Trains Manual Scavengers For Better Professional & Personal Life

Manual scavenging is indeed a blot on the image of a fast-developing India. Every year, dozens of people reportedly die while cleaning sewer lines without any protection.

Despite the legal ban enacted in 1993 on manual scavenging in India, this compromised job continues to devastate the lives of those, who have no choice but to get their hands dirty doing it.

However, years later, this law was followed up with a hopeful iteration, Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013.

Law, but no enforcement

The Manual Scavengers Act 2013 prohibited manual scavenging in all forms while ensuring rehabilitation of such workers. Evidently, various endeavours in the law-making process against manual scavenging have proven devilishly unproductive.

Sneha Singh, Advocate, Bombay High Court said, ¡°It¡¯s a socio-economic problem. Manual scavenging is done out of necessity and poverty, and not by choice. Manual scavengers certainly don¡¯t have the means to buy safety equipment as prescribed by the law. It is important that the government should set up some kind of subsidised or rental program where these workers can procure or rent safety equipment required for scavenging.¡±

There is always light at the end of the tunnel. In the year 2016, the British consumer goods giant Reckitt Benckiser made a historical move by setting up India¡¯s first operative model of the ¡®World Toilet College¡¯ in the city of Rishikesh, in Uttarakhand.

Toilet college, why?

The objective of this institution was aligned to the idea of Swacch Bharat Mission (Clean India). More so, it was also designed to empower and improve the lives of the downtrodden sanitary workers throughout the country.

In an interview with Indiatimes, Ravi Bhatnagar, Director, External Affair and partnerships, Reckitt Benckiser - Africa, Middle East, South Asia, said, ¡°During our first operational move of World Toilet College in Rishikesh nearly three years ago, we had successfully trained 5000 female masons who were in the job of building toilets. We are proud that we started in India with helping and supporting women first. That was a great start. But we were dreaming even bigger.¡±

Along the way, as it is famously called, India¡¯s first toilet college ¨C The ¡®Harpic World Toilet College¡¯ in supporting partnership with various organizations was inaugurated as a permanent institutional facility by Reckitt Benckiser, in August 2018 at Aurangabad in the state of Maharashtra.

The vision was to train the manual scavengers free of cost; with modern techniques in the area of sanitation and cleaning, which would ascertain a better life for them. Consequentially it would support the culture of positive transformation amongst the fraternity of manual scavengers.

Remarkable story

During the World Toilet Day celebrations, on November 19, 2019, Reckitt Benckiser announced that over the last 15 months Harpic World Toilet College had trained 4,000 sanitation workers, 30% that is nearly 1,200 of which were women.

The training imparted to the sanitation workers helped them secure sustainable employment opportunities in 90 organizations across the public and private sector. Some of the top recruiting companies include Aurangabad Municipal Corporation, Taj Hotels, Marriott, TATA Motors, Hero, PVR and ITC.

The criteria for admission in the college are clearly laid out. There are two basic criteria for the admission of manual scavengers who apply to be trained at the Toilet College.

First, it is passing the health screening and medical tests to establish they are not afflicted with any communicable disease. This is done with the help of a permanent bench of doctors the college has onboard. Second, it is to clear the psychometric tests to determine their aptitude and true willingness to take up the required training.

¡°We guide our trainees in partnership with the ¡®World Toilet College¡¯ in Singapore, which is headed by Jack Sim, who is eminently known as the ¡®Toilet Man¡¯. Jack is also the founder of the famous World Toilet Organization. So our training standards are par excellence¡± said Bhatnagar.

He also added, 90% of the manual scavengers who apply for training at the college come with health complications and are afflicted with critical diseases, such as, tuberculosis and grave chest related ailments.

Therefore such workers are first given the necessary treatment by the in-house doctors of the college before admitting them for training. Also, if need be, these patients through the training process are referred to the relevant government institutions for the required treatment. The college also grants a free health check-up facility for the kids of the trainees studying in the college.

How does the training go

The various programs designed in the college range from 10 to 30 days of training. The curriculum of the training course is designed such that it prepares manual scavengers toward implementing the methodology of automation and modern instrumentation in carrying out their jobs.

In addition, the course also trains them on the aspects of sanitation, hygiene, housekeeping and the appropriate ways of cleaning and maintenance tasks. The latter enables the trainees to fetch jobs in the private sector companies, such as MNCs, other corporates and hospitals. With such insightful curriculum, reportedly the dropout rate of the trainees is less than 2%.

Mr Pravin Thakre, COO, Dr Hedgware Rugnalaya said, ¡°The candidates from Harpic World Toilet College are well trained for housekeeping work. They have the right attitude, knowledge and skills. For a hospital set up, this kind of satisfactory cleanliness is required on a day to day basis.¡±

The college has also created three self-help groups located in Mumbai, Pune and Aurangabad called Swachhata Sainik, Swachhata Mitra and Swachhata Ratan, respectively.

These self-help groups comprise trained sanitation workers who have access to relevant safety gear and 22 modernized machines ¨C with the help of which they can operate autonomously as self-employed professionals. The Mumbai self-help groups (SHG) are made of 12 sanitation workers, and the other two operate with 20 sanitation workers.

¡°Training is easy but committing to having the trainees placed in good companies with sustainable jobs is difficult. For that we also impart etiquette, soft skills and language training at the college, which is highly challenging given the strata of society manual scavengers come from. However, we are proud that we placed more than 90% of the candidates at notable companies with sustainable jobs¡± said Bhatnagar.