What the article is about:
- The article talks about Manual scavenging and issues associated with it.
Relevance:
- Paper 1: Essay
- GS2: Government policies and intervention, Issues related to SCs and STs.
Analysis:
- Any person engaged to clean a sewer or a septic tank would have to be provided a list of 44 items of protective gear and safety devices by his employer, according to the Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Rules, 2022 notified by the State government recently.
- According to Social justice and empowerment ministry a total of 971 people lost their lives while cleaning sewers or septic tanks since 1993.
- While the job itself is dangerous, sewage cleaning involves working with human excreta, and can not be seen without invoking the concept of dignity of labour .
- Dignity of labour: The dignity of labour is the philosophy that all types of jobs are respected equally, and no occupation is considered superior and none of the jobs should be discriminated on any basis.
Government’s step for protection of manual scavengers:
- Manual scavenging is defined as “the removal of human excrement from public streets and dry latrines, cleaning septic tanks, gutters and sewers”.
- The Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation(Amendment) Bill, 2020:
- It proposes to completely mechanise sewer cleaning, introduce ways for ‘on-site’ protection and provide compensation to manual scavengers in case of sewer deaths.
- The Building and Maintenance of Insanitary Latrines Act of 2013:
- It outlaws construction or maintenance of unsanitary toilets, and the hiring of anybody for their manual scavenging, as well as of hazardous cleaning of sewers and septic tanks.
- Prevention of Atrocities Act:
- In 1989, the Prevention of Atrocities Act became an integrated guard for sanitation workers, more than 90% people employed as manual scavengers belonged to the Scheduled Caste. This became an important landmark to free manual scavengers from designated traditional occupations.
- 'Swachhta Abhiyan App’:
- It has been developed to identify and geotag the data of insanitary latrines and manual scavengers so that the insanitary latrines can be replaced with sanitary latrines and rehabilitate all the manual scavengers to provide dignity of life to them.
Way ahead:
- All efforts must be taken,within existing schemes, to provide compensation to the family members of those who have dies, and to provide them a way out of the profession, if they so wish.
