The Modi government claims that there are no reports of any death due to manual scavenging. The government said this in Parliament on Wednesday. But the other side of the picture is quite frightening. According to a report, 161 people have died due to accidents while cleaning sewer tanks in the last three years.
Social Justice and Empowerment Minister Virendra Kumar gave this information in Rajya Sabha. He said that as of now no person is doing manual scavenging work. The minister said that from 1993 to March 31, 2022, 791 people died during cleaning of septic tanks. 536 cases were registered regarding these cases. Compensation has been given to the dependents of 703 victims. He said that now emphasis is being laid on cleaning with machines. In order not to clean the sewer by hand, a subsidy of Rs 5 lakh is given along with a loan of up to Rs 15 lakh.
Looking at the other side of the picture, the government’s claim seems baseless. According to the news of the Indian Express, in March, three laborers who had landed in a tank to clean the sewer in an area of Mumbai had died.
In January 2019, three laborers died in a similar incident on Mira Road, and in May three laborers were killed in Nalasopara when they had come down to clean the septic tank of a private society. On May 11, a similar incident happened in the police station. There also three youths were killed. In Malwani, Mumbai, in 2017, three laborers died after landing in a septic tank, while in Dombivali, the father and son lost their lives. A BMC worker was also killed.
What is manual scavenging
Manual scavenging is considered manual scavenging of human waste from a sewerage or septic tank. However, under a 2013 Act, such work was declared illegal. At present, cleaning sewer and septic tank by any person is punishable and there is a provision of imprisonment up to five years or fine of five lakhs or both. But despite that, this work is going on indiscriminately, because there is no infrastructure for cleaning the sewerage.
Although BMC does offer sewerage cleaning but it is very expensive. Civic body charges 20 to 30 thousand rupees for cleaning a septic tank or sewerage. Whereas untrained laborers do this work in 300 to 500 rupees. BMC claims that it has also warned people about this through notices by arranging machines. For this, the corporation had procured hi-tech machines in the past.