More than 90% Workers Who Died While Cleaning Sewers Didn't Have Safety Gears: Govt
The Wire Staff
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New Delhi: More than 90 per cent of workers who died while cleaning sewers did not have safety gears, a government social audit has revealed.
The absence of safety gear or personalised protective equipment (PPE) kits resulted in the workers carrying out the hazardous work with just a pair of gloves and gumboots, reported The Hindu.
The Social Justice Ministry had commissioned a study into hazardous cleaning deaths in September 2023.
The audit had analysed the circumstances surrounding 54 such deaths in 17 districts across in eight states and Union Territories that occurred between 2022 and 2023.
The government data revealed that 150 people across the country died due to hazardous cleaning in 2022 and 2023, reported the newspaper.
The findings of the social audit, which were made public in the parliament on Tuesday (July 22) revealed that in 49 out of the 54 deaths examined, the workers were not wearing any safety equipment. The Social Justice Ministry was replying to a question in the Lok Sabha by Congress MP Praniti Sushilkumar Shinde.
In five of the cases, they were wearing just gloves, and in one case, gloves and gumboots.
The audit revealed that in 47 cases, “no mechanised equipment and safety gears for cleaning of sewers and septic tanks were made available to the workers”.
Only two instances were found wherein the necessary equipment was made available to the workers and in only one case the training was provided.
One of the worrying facts that has emerged from the audit is that in 27 cases no consent was taken and even in the 18 cases where written consent was taken from the workers, “they were not counselled on the risks involved in the work”.
Earlier this year, the Supreme Court had expressed strong dissatisfaction with the authorities in Kolkata, Delhi, Bengaluru and Hyderabad over their failure to provide a clear plan to eradicate manual scavenging and manual sewer cleaning in their cities and had summoned them.
The apex court’s directives come after a writ petition was filed seeking the eradication of manual scavenging in India. On January 29, a two-judge bench of Justices Sudhanshu Dhulia and Aravind Kumar had banned manual scavenging and manual sewer cleaning in six metropolitan cities, including Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore, and Hyderabad.
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