While walking down the street and passing by a manhole you all must have come across people going inside the sewers without any safety equipments. We tend to walk away, covering our mouth and groaning at the dirt. We think it is really unhygienic to stand there not realising that the person cleaning it is actually going inside the hole. People look down upon them while they are working and move away from the person as he comes out of the hole. But how many of us know the lethal conditions they work in and the myriad dangers they face?
The process of manually cleaning, carrying or disposing of human excreta in an insanitary latrine or in an open drain is known as Manual Scavenging and can be fatal.
The Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act-2013 abolishes manual scavenging and it is deemed an illegal practice in India.Does that mean people don't enter manholes anymore? The answer is no. Contractors take advantage of the existing loopholes in the law and employ the manual scavengers in order to reduce costs. [1]
I have observed this in my neighbourhood as well. Everytime the manhole is choked there's someone there to clean it. I met Suresh uncle on one such occasion. He was inside the manhole cleaning it. He carried the waste in a polythene and then transferred it to a cart. I felt really bad for the way people looked down upon him. They chose to turn a blind eye to him . Even if they notice them, people associate these manual scavengers with dirt and impurity. They refused to offer Suresh uncle even a glass of water. He told me that people consider them as inferior and use derogatory terms for them. For all the risks he takes, he is paid a meager Rs.300. This amount is not enough to sustain his family of six keeping in mind the education and health of his four children.
A major reason for this is also the casteist sentiments prevailing in the Indian Society. Manual scavengers are often people from lower castes who are stigmatised as dirty or impure. So no one wants to touch them or the objects touched by them; For example, the refusal of the glass of water. Their caste as well as occupation makes people label them as ‘untouchable’. This perpetuates widespread social discrimination and also violates Article 17 of the Indian Constitution which abolishes untouchability.
I asked Suresh uncle why he did that job. To this, he replied by saying that he didn't know any other work. Also, his family had been doing this for ages and it is the only source of income they have. He also told me that they didn't have any protective equipment for going down the manhole –- not even a safety mask. Can you imagine not wearing a mask in a manhole full of harmful gases? Just the thought of it sends a chill down our spines. What about these people who have no other option but to risk their lives every day in order to provide for their families?
I was astounded to see the death toll due to manual scavenging in the past 10 years. According to the National Commission for Safai Karamcharis (NCSK), a total of 631 people have died in the country while cleaning sewers and septic tanks in the last 10 years. The figure was provided by the NCSK in response to an RTI query on the number of deaths reported while cleaning sewers and septic tanks from 2010 to March 2020. This might not seem like a very big number but we must remember that these 631 people lost their lives due to the lack of safety equipment while cleaning the manholes. [2]
On June 12, 2018, thirty-five year old Dalsukh Chabaria went down a manhole near the Riyaz Hotel in Jamalpur, Ahmedabad. But who knew that this blackhole of death would swallow his life and he would never come back? He went down the hole without any safety measures and died of asphyxiation. Dalsukh is one of the many sanitation workers who die on the job every year – not only in Gujarat, but across India.Toxic gases present in the manholes can make a person lose their consciousness. The “sewer gas” present inside the manhole is particularly toxic. This gas is a complex combination of various organic and inorganic compounds, the levels of which can vary greatly. It is a mixture of hydrogen sulfide, methane, ammonia and carbon dioxide. It can cause nausea and convulsions. [3] [4]
Without suitable breathing equipment and protective gear the worker is left vulnerable to both gases and hazardous materials. Many of the workers entering the sewers will have minimal training . As such, they may not know the proper protocols to respond to any hazards. This can result in panicking, or unknowingly walking into dangerous areas.
I think that this is a threat to our society where-in castes believed to be inferior than others are made to risk their lives. The work these people do is indispensable and yet their labour is invisibilized. They are not even allowed to live a dignified life. We should thank them for the job they do and treat them as equal human beings. They should be provided with adequate training and safety equipments so as to reduce the chances of the deaths.
With the advancements in technology, machines can also be used for this purpose. People who are working as manual scavengers should be given vocational training so that they can stop doing that work and earn their livelihood without putting their lives at risk. We should remember that they are equal citizens of India just like everyone else. We don't have any right to discriminate or relegate them. All of us need to bring a change in our outlooks and we, as the younger generation, need to initiate that. The day we realise that everyone has the right to live a dignified life, the problem of manual scavenging will no longer exist.
SOURCES
[1] Prohibition of persons from engagement or employment for hazardous cleaning of sewers and septic tanks.
OTHER SOURCES
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