Manual scavenging is considered as one of the worst violations of human rights and exploitation of unskilled labour. Sadly it's still prevalent in India despite it's prohibition through the act of 1993. Despite the ban, an estimated 1.3 million people still work as a manual scavengers in India.
The people involved in this profession are mostly poor, uneducated dalits and they literally clean the sewers and septic tanks with their own hands without wearing any safety suits. The most shameful and disturbing thing about this profession is that it is driven by caste,class and income divides. Manual scavenging indirectly promotes the still prevalent practice of “untouchability” in the country. If they asks water from any of the member of the neighborhood in which they are appointed to clean the septic tank, the person giving water maintains a suitable distance in order to avoid any kind of contact and leaves his bottle or glass behind considering it as" dirty".Even in some instances the doctors refuse to touch them citing their body as “ dirty body”.
Not only manual scavenging supports discrimination but also is hazardous for health . A lot of poisonous and toxic gases are evolved from the decaying faecal matter like hydrogen sulphide, methane,carbon monoxide and coming in direct contact with these gases cause lethal medical issues such as nausea, skin disease, anaemia, jaundice. Hydrogen sulphide gas is also associated with reducing of eyesight. Long exposure to these gases can easily cause unconscionsnes to a person and can even lead to death.It's estimated that over 600 sewer workers die every year and that's ten times more than the number of Indian soldiers killed by terrorists.
Manual scavengers in india are rarely provided with any personal protective equipment and safety equipments. Despite the introduction of several machinery human intervention still continues in large numbers.This dehumanizing practice is also prevalent in Bangladesh and Pakistan. But most countries have found soluton to maintain this for example Mexico adopted the ecological sanitation model , America have constructed proper tunnels and uses machines. But according to researchers, besides sewage material our sewage plants contains a lot of plastics and debris , which is something machines cannot deal with. “ Our country poor infrastructure”, “low engineering standards of sewers" and absence of safeguard lamps makes this work further more dangerous.
Introducing a ban is not at all sufficient to regulate illegal manual scavenging. Proper inspection and enforcement of law is required to stop this dehumanizing practice. Besides government does not want to invest in any machinery because they know there are group of helpless and marginalized people ready to do this job.
