The Union government on December 5 told Lok Sabha that 49 persons had died this year till November 20 due to unsafe cleaning of sewers and septic tanks, while also clarifying that it has no data on the number of “manhole cleaning robots” deployed across the country or where they were being used.
The information was made public by Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment Ramdas Athawale, and comes in the wake of city authorities in West Bengal, Maharashtra, and Kerala making public statements through the year about introducing such machinery for sewer-cleaning.
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The government said that a total of 443 people had died from hazardous cleaning of sewers and septic tanks in India since 2018. It added that the most number of such deaths this year were reported in the States of Rajasthan (10), Gujarat (nine), Tamil Nadu (seven), and Maharashtra (seven).
The Social Justice Ministry was responding to a question from Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP Aparupa Poddar, who had asked a list of questions on manual scavenging, deaths due to hazardous sewer cleaning, and the status of the project to have all districts self-declare as manual-scavenging free.
It said that the government is already in the process of considering a fresh nationwide survey of manual scavengers, as reported by The Hindu in 2022. The government is currently operating with data of manual scavengers collected in a survey in 2018. This survey, later corrected, recorded a total of around 58,000 manual scavengers, who were signed up for the rehabilitation scheme. However, activists have maintained that this number is undercounted, and that manual scavenging still takes place.
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The Social Justice Ministry added that, as of November 29, a total of 716 districts out of 766 had reported themselves to be manual-scavenging free, further saying the districts that have not yet declared themselves as such must provide a list of insanitary latrines in their areas.
But senior Ministry officials have clarified that this self-declaration for manual scavenging is entirely based on whether there are insanitary latrines in the district and if none are found, it is assumed that no manual scavenging takes place in the said district.
