Stop sewer deaths, wards of victims cry out

Aditi Tandon
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, September 25

Seven young men have died cleaning sewers across the country in less than a fortnight, marking a sombre start to the 150th birth anniversary celebrations of Mahatma Gandhi who devoted his life to untouchability.

Unable to bear the pain of continuing loss family members of scores of sewer death victims gathered in the national capital on Tuesday under the banner of Safai Karamchari Andolan to demand mechanisation of sewerage system cleaning.

Close to seven women who lost their husbands in the job of gutter cleaning in Ludhiana alone were part of the protests although all of them said they had received compensations mandated under the law.

Speaking to The Tribune, Babli whose husband died from asphyxiation in a Ludhiana sewer on April 7, 2015 said she had received Rs 10 lakh compensation in lieu of the loss.

“But money is no compensation for a lost life. I’ve lost everything with my husband’s death. I have three small children who will now grow up with uncertain futures. I have not even got a government job after my husband passed away. I am here because I want to save other men in this abominable profession. No one deserves to die in a gutter,” said Babli accompanied by another woman Veena whose husband died similarly in 2014.

The Supreme Court had in a landmark judgment in 2014 mandated a minimum compensation of Rs 10 lakh in case of a death due to sewerage line cleaning. The order had come in a petition by Bezwada Wilson of Safai Karamchari Andolan.

There are an estimated 15 lakh sewer cleaners in India who enter gutters without protective equipment and always at the risk of their lives.

SKA is now demanding urgent investments in mechanised cleaning systems with speaker after speaker today saying that a broom wielding Prime Minister would serve the cause of Clean India better if he put the money in modern sewer cleaning technologies that don’t cost anything except political will.

Also present was Rani, the partner of Anil, the latest sewer death victim in Delhi. Rani and Anil had planned to marry next week. Stop sewer deaths, wards of victims cry out.