A Question Of Dignity

Context: Pandemic should lead to urgency in addressing Sanitation Workers’ safety and welfare related issues.

Challenges associated with Sanitation Workers

• Serious concern of Health Hazards: Frontline workers have laboured with unrelenting grit in the face of health hazards.
• Inextricably they are tied with caste-based occupational roles: The bulk of such work is done by people from SCs and STs in some areas. 
• Subjected to discrimination, stigma, and, even, untouchability for years: The most stigmatised among them are those engaged in the manual cleaning of sewers, septic tanks, pits and drains. 
• Despite the Prohibition of Employment of Manual Scavengers Act, 2013, the practice continues unabated, because sanitation work is subcontracted to private businesses and informal labourers.
• Unable to get the accurate estimate of the number of manual scavengers and sanitation workers.

Way Forward: Government Initiatives for Sanitation Workers

• Successful construction of toilets in the Swachh Bharat Mission-1: Construction of toilets with on-site sanitation systems in urban, peri-urban and rural areas.
• Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation: Larger sanitation infrastructure.
  • Need to augment the sanitation value chain: In mechanised cleaning and treatment of waste.
  • Extension of the Swachh Bharat Mission (Gramin and Urban) and Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation to their second phases.
• Self-Employment Scheme for Rehabilitation of Manual Scavengers: Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment has been taking measures for the rehabilitation of sanitation workers under its revised.
  • Provides one-time cash assistance, loans at concessional rates, subsidy and skill development training.
• National Safai Karamcharis Finance and Development Corporation: It is building capacities at the local government level, equipping government agencies with mechanised desludging trucks and providing financial assistance to sanitation workers, manual scavengers and their dependents.
• National Action for Mechanised Sanitation Ecosystem plans: Set up units at the district and local government levels to monitor sanitation services. 
  • It will be synchronised with decentralised monitoring of violations of sanitation protocols and informal education campaigns.
  • Objective: to eradicate manual scavenging and ensuring welfare to sanitation workers.