339 lives lost to manual scavenging in 5 years in New India

As many as 339 persons have lost their lives to the evil of manual scavenging in the last five years in India, the government informed Parliament this week.

These persons were killed while cleaning sewers and septic tanks. As per a reply by the Union social justice and empowerment ministry in the Lok Sabha, nine such deaths have been recorded this year till July. In 2022, this figure was 66; in 2021 it was 58 deaths, in 2020 it was 22; in 2019, as many as 117 persons lost their lives to manual scavenging while in 2018, a total of 67 deaths were recorded.

As per the government reply, the deaths occurred due to “hazardous cleaning of sewers and septic tanks and non-observance of safety precautions as prescribed under Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013”.

Manual scavenging is an outlawed practice under the said Act, which bans the use of any individual for manually cleaning, carrying or handling in any manner human excreta.

In response to the question ‘whether Self-Employment Scheme of Liberation and Rehabilitation of Scavengers has been removed from the budget 2023_24’, junior minister for social justice and empowerment Ramdas Athawale told Lok Sabha that the scheme has been renamed as National Action for Mechanised Sanitation Ecosystem (NAMASTE).

Incidentally, these sanitation workers were losing their lives for want of safety equipment and machinery while the Union government was spending thousands of crores on erecting new buildings and constructing expressways.