Strictly apply laws that ban manual scavenging
Recently two sanitation workers and also a contractor who had employed
them died of suffocation in a manhole at Panvel. The Panvel incident took place
at Kalundre Village in the month of March. The manual scavengers were engaged
in cleaning a sewage line when they apparently suffered suffocation due to
poisonous gases inside a manhole. All the manual scavengers who have dead till
date were not provided with the protective gear. And till now the municipal
corporations, state government and the central government are not taking any
steps to help these sanitation workers.
Manual scavenging is a term used mainly in India for the manual removal
of untreated human excreta from bucket toilets or pit latrines by hand with
buckets and shovels. It has been officially prohibited by law in 1993 due to it
being regarded as a caste-based, dehumanizing practice (if not done in a safe
manner). It involves moving the excreta, using brooms and tin plates, into
baskets, which the workers carry to disposal locations sometimes several
kilometers away. The workers, called scavengers (or more appropriately
"sanitation workers"), rarely have any personal protective equipment.
Manual scavenging is a caste-based occupation, with the vast majority of
workers involved being women.
The employment of manual scavengers to empty a certain type of dry toilet
that requires manual daily emptying was prohibited in India in 1993. The law
was extended and clarified to include insanitary latrines, ditches and pits in
2013.
According to Socio Economic Caste Census 2011, 180,657 households are
engaged in manual scavenging for a livelihood. The 2011 Census of India found
794,000 cases of manual scavenging across India. The state of Maharashtra, with
63,713, tops the list with the largest number of households working as manual
scavengers, followed by the states of Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Tripura
and Karnataka.
“Manual scavenger” means a person
engaged or employed, at the commencement of this Act or at any time thereafter,
by an individual or a local authority or an agency or a contractor, for
manually cleaning, carrying, disposing of, or otherwise handling in any manner,
human excreta in an insanitary latrine or in an open drain or pit into which
the human excreta from the insanitary latrines is disposed of, or railway track
or in such other spaces or premises, as the Central Government or a State
Government may notify, before the excreta fully decomposes in such manner as
may be prescribed, and the expression “manual scavenging” shall be construed
accordingly.
The United Nations human rights chief welcomed in 2013 the movement in
India to eradicate manual scavenging. After six states passed resolutions
requesting the Central Government to frame a law, The Employment of Manual
Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act, 1993, drafted by
the Ministry of Urban Development under the Narasimha Rao government, was
passed by Parliament in 1993. The Employment of Manual Scavengers and
Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act, 1993 punishes the employment of
scavengers or the construction of dry (non-flush) latrines with imprisonment
for up to one year and/or a fine of Rs 2,000. No convictions were obtained
under the law during the 20 years it was in force.
The broad objectives of the act are to eliminate unsanitary latrines,
prohibit the employment of manual scavengers and the hazardous manual cleaning
of sewer and septic tanks, and to maintain a survey of manual scavengers and
their rehabilitation. The question is why are these laws not being implemented?
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