Sanitation work is the practice of cleaning, carrying and disposing of human excreta from dry latrines or sewers. People doing this inhumane job are at great risk of their lives. Laws have been passed to end this practice: The Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act, 1993 and Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act 2013.
The Risks Of Sanitation Work
The condition of sanitation workers continues to worsen despite this ban. Those employed to do this work belong mostly to the Dalit community. Women are also employed in large numbers for this work. Cleaning of dry toilets is mostly done by women and cleaning of septic tanks and sewers is done by men.
Proper safety equipment is not provided to them. It’s commonly seen that women carry the waste without gloves and masks, and men enter sewages without masks, gloves, shoes or any safety precautions. The workers are exposed to gasses such as hydrogen disulfide, carbon (IV) oxide, ammonia and methane. Long exposure to hydrogen disulfide can lead to death by asphyxia.
The human faeces and wastes on railway tracks are also cleaned by sanitation workers with the help of broom and metal leaves and then sprayed with water.
The average life expectancy of sanitation workers is said to be about 40–50 years of age.
The people doing this work are often discriminated against, considering the nature of this job and also their caste. Hence, this results in their children being discriminated against and they end up doing the same work. Even educated people can be seen taking up these jobs for the lack of employment opportunities, especially in the Dalit community.
Over 66,000 sanitation workers were identified across the country in 2021. The government has denied the deaths due to sanitation work, but authorities have confirmed that 941 sanitation workers died nationwide while cleaning sewers and septic tanks.
Activist Bezwada Wilson from the SKA (Safai Karmachari Andolan), which works to eradicate sanitation work, tweeted that 472 deaths had been recorded between 2016 and 2020, with 26 deaths in 2021.
“Upper caste people say ‘If you don’t work as a manual scavenger, you won’t be allowed to stay here.'” – Lalibai #InDeepShit
— Youth Ki Awaaz (@YouthKiAwaaz) April 22, 2017
The Alternatives
Ways to bring an end to this have been coming up for many years. Various researches and discoveries were made to replace machines with people for this work, yet nothing has been done when it comes to implementation.
In Delhi, the Kejriwal Government has ensured there will be no sanitation work as sewage cleaning machines are in place, but there are still deaths from this work in Delhi as it has not been properly implemented yet. One of the reasons is Delhi’s small lanes where the machines are unable to reach.
According to SKA, one of the main reasons for the existence of sanitation work is the usage of dry latrines. According to the 2011 census, there are 26,07,612 dry latrines in India. Sanitation workers are employed to clean these latrines.
The government claims to have built 93 million toilets under Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, but these toilets have been constructed using technologies that would require periodic emptying and offsite treatment of the faecal matter, as per a report by Scroll.in.
An alternative to a dry latrine can be a urine-diverting dry toilet, popularly called “Ecosan”, short for “ecological sanitation”. The Ecosan is a dry toilet built on a raised platform; excreta are not flushed out but stored in sealed chambers to be used as farm manure later.
Genrobotics, a company founded by nine young engineers in Thiruvananthapuram, developed a robot called Bandicoot to clean manholes and end sanitation work. This can be a good move, but how effective is it going to be? India has approximately 4,000 cities and towns and every city will need at least four of these robots. The cost of one robot is ₹32 lakhs.
The budget allocation for rehabilitation of sanitation workers was ₹70 crore in 2013–14 and ₹5 crore in 2015–16. The allocation for the succeeding financial years was ₹1 crore and ₹5 crore respectively.
But then it rose to ₹70 crore in 2018–19 and the next year was raised further to ₹100 crore. The actual expenditures in these 2 years was roughly ₹85 crore, the highest in a decade. In the year 2020–21, the budget allocation fell, once again, to ₹30 crore.
The government should first and foremost do its part by taking this with all seriousness and making sure there are no further deaths by placing a blanket ban on sanitation work, educating the people who do this work and providing them alternative work. They can also be allotted jobs in the MNREGA scheme.
People’s part should be not to put substances like plastic or other solid substances down the drainage pipes and clog them; report owners who employ sanitation workers for a cheap fee. If possible, give knowledge to the workers and enlighten them with their rights.
Private firms can come forward with providing funding for sewage machines or robots, at least for their respective zones or areas.
Awareness of this issue is very critical and immediate plans can be implemented.