Death in the sewer

Hazardous cleaning of sewer/septic tanks continues to claim the lives of sewage workers across the country. Four of them died after inhaling a poisonous gas during maintenance work inside a tank of a sewage treatment plant at Buddakhera village in Haryana’s Hisar district on April 19, a month after three labourers choked to death while cleaning a septic tank in Mumbai’s suburb Kandivali. According to the National Commission for Safai Karamcharis, one sanitation worker dies every fifth day on an average while cleaning these tanks. The Union Government claims to have abolished manual scavenging, as envisaged in the Prohibition of Employment of Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act (2013), but the harsh reality is that this dehumanising and life-threatening practice is far from over.

In September 2019, the SC had rapped the Centre for failing to provide protective gear such as masks and oxygen cylinders to workers involved in the unclogging of sewers. Bemoaning the prevalence of caste bias even over 70 years after Independence, the SC Bench had pointedly asked the government: ‘Will any of you shake hands with them (manual scavengers)?’ The working conditions of these safai karamcharis continue to be pathetic — a bitter truth for a nation that is celebrating Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav.

Achieving the twin goals of fully mechanised cleaning of sewer/septic tanks and the rehabilitation of manual scavengers remains a distant dream. About three years ago, IIT-Madras had developed India’s first septic tank-cleaning robot. The remote-controlled Sepoy Septic Tank Robot was supposed to have rid the society of manual scavenging by preventing human exposure to hazardous gases and microbes. However, government apathy and commercial unviability rendered this machine a non-starter. A nationwide audit is needed to pinpoint the lapses in the implementation of the 2013 Act and prepare an actionable road map for complete mechanisation of sewer-cleaning operations. This safe course is being practised in the West and in several Asian nations, and India needs to follow suit to ensure a life of dignity, not an undignified death, for its faceless, anonymous sanitation workers.