Manual scavengers continue to die in Delhi

Deaths of private and government workers in manholes and sewers have become quite frequent these days despite the hard fact that the governments have been claiming various protective measures and financial compensations for this vulnerable workforce, including laws for their safety while they undertake cleaning operations under extremely challenging and distressing situations.

There have been hundreds of deaths of employees working in sewers and manholes in Delhi, the national capital region and various states of the country. These workers who execute their duties under extremely difficult situations inside fully jammed manholes and sewers have neither job security, financial or medical safeguards, and guarantees nor are insured for financial compensations after their tragic deaths during duty hours, usually inside manholes due to highly toxic gases and under critical circumstances.

Even if these workers, the majority of them hailing from the Dalit community, underprivileged and economically deprived classes are luckily alive, they become prone to various contagious diseases like tuberculosis, cancer, and infection in lungs requiring lots of money for adequate treatments after their retirement or after they become old. These vulnerable manholes and sewer workers, known as manual scavengers have the darkest future with no governmental support financial or otherwise. If we believe in the latest governmental statistics about 40 manual scavengers have died to date since 2017 in Delhi alone not to speak of the statistics of deaths of manual scavengers at the pan India level which is myriad in numbers.

As per sources, a thirty-year-old man has died yesterday while cleaning the sewer in east Delhi while his fellow-laborer was admitted in the Hegdewar hospital after falling seriously ill due to inhaling of heavily toxic fumes. The tragic incident occurred at Karkardooma Court Gate number 4 where a private contractor had hired two scavengers namely Ravi and Sanjay, aged 34 to clean the manhole. The private contractor is absconding and the police are doing their best to nab him. According to these sources, two manual scavengers were hired by the private contractor who had gone down in the manhole near BSES office CBD ground Shahadara in the afternoon on Sunday to clean the sewer. It is believed that they were not provided with adequate safety equipment including oxygen cylinder etc inside the deep manhole.

After a few hours when the workers didn’t come out of the manhole the fire brigade was called to trace and evacuate the scavengers from the manhole. After the great efforts of these fire brigade rescuers, two of them were quickly evacuated but by that time one of them had died while another had to be rushed to Hegdewar hospital in an unconscious position. The toxic gases inside the manhole have resulted in the death of one of the workers due to asphyxiation, say the sources. The Shahdara police have registered a case under necessary sections of IPC allegedly holding the contractor responsible for the death of Ravi. The investigation by the police is in progress.

The private contractor seems to be still at large. There had been several cases of such deaths in the manholes of Delhi last year. The government of the states and center should take these deaths seriously and devise a special law to ensure the safety of manual scavengers and arrange to give hefty financial compensation or govt job to the next of the kin of the deceased who died in manholes during the process of cleaning them. Adequate safety equipment including the provision of oxygen cylinders should be made mandatory when these workers go down in these manholes for extracting dirt and clearing them of trash.

Manual Scavenging a serious problem! Should be dealt with on extreme priority basis !