Sewer Story: Death Of Sanitation Workers In Delhi Exposes The Hypocrisy & Failure Of Govt

Every day hundreds of men descend into the putrid, foul smelling gutters of the national capital without any safety gear. The number is staggering for the rest of the country. Those who die during the duty are replaced by others, waiting to put their lives in danger just to earn a living for themselves and their families.

Every week young men line up for Rs 200 that they get to clean 20-25 gutters. They do this each day of a week, till they fall sick due to poisonous gasses in sewers or die of asphyxiation.

While sewage cleaning has become mechanised in some parts of the country, the government figures suggest nearly 8,00,000 people still work as sewage cleaners.

In Delhi, sewage travels across 5,600- kilometre long sewer lines at the speed of one metre per second. There are more than 1.5 lakh manholes for the effluents released by the Capital¡¯s close to 19 million people.

Reports suggest that nearly 23,000 men and women die in India every year doing various kinds of sanitation work.

Recent spate of deaths in the capital

Rajesh, one of the survivors of the Lajpat Nagar sewage cleaning fiasco, which turned fatal for three, is left with severe injuries and is jobless for the last 10 days after he descended into a sewer and fell unconscious, only to be pulled up the last member after he stopped responding.

bccl

Hailing from Uttar Pradesh, he has a wife and an 18-year-old daughter to look after. Rajesh, with his family, is currently in hiding. He has been constantly receiving death threats from the members of his community who question his survival.

¡°You know our work is dirty. Filth and human excreta are obvious, sometimes we even come across dead animals like dogs, cats and rats. Broken bottles lurking in darkness mark our bodies with scars and cuts.¡±

The incident comes weeks after four sanitation workers died of asphyxiation while cleaning a septic tank in Ghitorni. Nine sanitation workers have died in Delhi in 2017, so far.

Toxic sewage gases claimed two more lives when two sanitation workers entered a septic tank without any safety gear at a mall in Anand Vihar on August 12.

Government & civic bodies in denial mode

In stark contrast to reports, Delhi Jal Board says that the task of sewage cleaning is completely mechanised and that manual scavenging has not been in practice for almost a decade now in the capital.

¡°We get regular complaints of sewer blockage in the area but all the tasks are completely mechanised. We use manual labour only to open shallow lines which are two feet deep. We have all the safety gear including gum boots, masks, jackets etc, for workers in case it is required¡±, says Ravikant, a Delhi Jal Board Employee in North Delhi, while pointing at some sticks and rods kept in a corner of an ill-kept office.

¡°We use only machines to do the cleaning. We do not allow men to enter the sewers¡±, he adds.

bccl

Delhi Commission for Safai Karamcharies, the top authority for the welfare of sanitation workers in Delhi, works towards the rehabilitation of such workers and addresses the issues affecting their socioeconomic and working conditions. The four municipal bodies in Delhi employs around 20,000 sanitation workers to keep the city clean.

On March 2014, a landmark ruling from the Supreme Court said sewer workers should also be included in laws abolishing manual scavenging as they have to handle human excreta under extremely difficult and hazardous conditions while cleaning sewer lines, often without any protective gear.

¡°Employing manual labour to clean sewage systems is a clear violation of the Supreme Court¡¯s ruling. It is extremely disheartening that in such modern times, everyday cases of deaths of sanitation workers are reported. We have sent a consolidated report about the recent deaths to the government requesting them to start an awareness camp against such practices,¡± said Sant Lal Chawariya, Chairman, Delhi Commission for Safai Karamcharies.

¡°While we know that manual scavenging has been abolished the by the law, there is no question of providing safety gear to men. Why are we still talking about safety equipment when manual scavenging has been abolished? We demand provision for punishment of employers who employee manual scavengers. As soon as a sanitation worker is employed to clean a sewer, the law is violated their itself,¡± he added.

The compensation to family members of the deceased as fixed by the apex court is Rs 10 lakh. Without protests and waiting for months, the family members do not receive a single penny.

"Swachh Bharat a failure"

The authorities say they are working towards the rehabilitation of such workers providing them better jobs like giving auto and taxi permits and assisting their children to get admission in schools for better education opportunities. However, much remains only on paper and is used to make hollow promises. Rehabilitation seems to be a distant dream for sanitation workers.

Bezwada Wilson, founder of Safai Karamchari Andolan and a recipient of Ramon Magsaysay Award, says: ¡°Unfortunately, the government always goes into a mode of denial and believe it is not necessary to hear to the grievances of the sanitation workers. In March 2014, the Supreme Court directed the government to compile a list of deceased manual scavengers from 1993 and work towards the rehabilitation of their families. Till date, there has been zero effort from the government in this direction.¡±

bccl

Wilson believes the major issue with the government is that it does not consider organisations working towards the welfare of sanitation workers as a collective entity. Instead, it sees such bodies as a threat working against the government.

Criticising the Swachh Bharat Mission without mincing any words, Wilson says the pilot project of the Prime Minister of India has done nothing towards the welfare of sanitation workers. ¡°Constructing new toilets without dismantling dry toilets is a directionless effort. The government is silent on this issue and is only highlighting the goal to construct 21 crore new toilets in the country. Swachh Bharat is about business. It is merely a corporate programme,¡± he adds.

More than 95 per cent of sewer workers are from India¡¯s lowest social class, the Dalits, once known as ¡°untouchables¡±. The job still exists because of the widespread apathy towards the Dalits, who form the most deprived community in the country despite efforts to end caste-based discrimination.

The government has failed to enforce The Employment of Manual Scavenging and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act, 2013, that made it illegal to employ manual scavengers. However, the law in itself is contradictory because it also outlines tests that must be conducted before a worker enters a sewer. It is a clear indication that the government itself cannot outlaw a job that employs a certain community, who would otherwise lack alternative work.

While Prime Minister Narendra Modi has declared the eradication of manual scavenging by 2019, the ground reality is starkly contrasting and chances of the fulfilment of the PM¡¯s promise look grim.