Are Sewer cleaning machines really ending manual scavenging in India?

Ground Report | New Delhi: Manual scavenging in India; In 2021, the government announced a series of measures to end the discriminatory and dangerous practice of manual waste collection. Hand scavenging is the practice of removing human waste from toilets, septic tanks, or sewers by hand.

Manual scavenging in India

Being a sanitation worker in India is more of a terrible sentence than a real job occupation. Although this huge Asian country, home to more than 1,300 million inhabitants, has greatly improved the situation of this sector with the construction of more than 100 million community toilets throughout its territory. It continues to lead the world ranking in terms of the volume of people without access to safe sanitation.

Nearly 190 million Indians have limited or unimproved facilities and more than 200 million are forced to defecate in the open because they don't have regular access to toilets, according to statistics from the World Health Organization's (WHO) Joint Monitoring Program. and UNICEF.

The government recently said that there are 58,098 manual scavengers in the country and 42,594 of them belong to the Scheduled Castes. RJD MP Manoj Jha had asked the ministry what is the caste-based separate number of persons involved in manual scavenging, what steps have been taken to include them in the economic system and completely eliminate the practice.

According to data from the Union Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, the government has caste-related data of 43,797 identified manual scavengers, and more than 42,500 of them belong to the Scheduled Castes.

According to research conducted by The Wire in 2021, the average life expectancy of sanitation workers is 40 to 45 years, significantly lower than the Indian national average, which is 70 years. In addition, they experience high rates of prolonged illness and directly work-related mortality is high: between 375 and 475 people who work in the manual collection have died on the job during the last five years, mainly due to suffocation while cleaning sewers and septic tanks.

And this is only according to official records – the true death rate could be significantly higher, only certain types of accidents at work are already taken into account and in addition, many workers resort to drugs and alcohol to cope with these unsustainable situations.

Still, manual scavenging persists in many rural parts of our nation. It still survives in parts of India without proper sewage systems or safe faecal sludge management practices. It is thought to be prevalent in many areas of Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan.

Reasons for the Prevalence of Manual Scavenging.

• Indifferent attitude: Several independent polls have spoken about the continuing reluctance on the part of state governments to admit that the practice prevails under their watch.

• Problem due to outsourcing: Local agencies often outsource sewer cleaning tasks to private contractors. However, many of them are operators who fly at night and do not hold the proper sanitation worker roles.

• Social issue: The practice is driven by caste, class, and income division. It is linked to the caste system in India, where so-called lower castes are expected to do this job. The law has ended manual scavenging as a form of employment, however the stigma and discrimination associated with it still persist. The stigma and discrimination associated with handpicking make it difficult for released handpickers to secure alternative livelihoods.

Initiatives to end Manual Scavenging !

India launches initiative to end manual scavenging. India has struggled to enforce laws banning this unsafe practice. Under the new measures, sewer and septic tank cleaning will be mechanised, with funds directly transferred to sanitation workers to buy cleaning machines.

Recently, the government has announced two major initiatives for ending the hazardous practice and making mechanised cleaning must.

• The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment will amend the law for making machine cleaning mandatory.

• The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs has launched the Safaimitra Suraksha Challenge.

Amendment of the Law: Introduction of 'The Prohibition of Employment as Manual Garbage Dumpers and its Rehabilitation (Amendment) Bill, 2020' as part of the National Action Plan of the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment.

The Plan aims to modernize the existing sewerage system and the coverage of areas without sewerage; start-up of the faecal sludge and sewage sludge management system for the mechanized cleaning of septic tanks, transport and treatment of faecal sludge, equipment for municipalities and start-up of Sanitary Response Units with helplines.

The bill makes the following important changes:

• Mechanized Cleaning: The Bill proposes to fully mechanize sewage cleaning and provide better protection at work and compensation in case of accidents.

• Punishment: The bill proposes to toughen the law that prohibits manual harvesting by increasing the prison sentence and the amount of the fine.

Currently hiring any person for hazardous sewer and septic tank cleaning by any person or agency is punishable by imprisonment for up to five years or a fine of up to Rs. 5 lakh or both.

• Funds: The funds will be delivered directly to the toilets and not to the municipalities or contractors for the purchase of the machinery.

Various measures were taken by our government to stop manual scavenging. One such initiative leads to the introduction of sewer-cleaning machines in various parts of the country. Similarly, Delhi Government is trying to end manual scavenging by using sewer-cleaning machines.

Despite human assistance, these machines are often not powerful enough to clear the filthy sewers in India’s cities, clogged with sewage and other assorted garbage, such as wrapping, polythene bags and plastic bottles. In such cases, a more powerful machine is called to complete the job.

The machine in Srinivaspuri is one of 200 sewer-cleaning machines that were launched by the Delhi government in February 2019. The objective: to end the practice of manual scavenging and rehabilitate sanitation workers by making them owners of these machines.

You can connect with Ground Report on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Whatsapp and Subscribe to our YouTube channel. For suggestions and writeups mail us at [email protected] Manual scavenging in India

ALSO READ: What is Wordle? How to play and win the internet’s latest game obsession

ALSO READ: Coke Studios Kana Yaari song with Lyrics