Indian government promises to step up enforcement to eradicate sewer cleaning deaths

nnouncing the new National Action Plan for Mechanised Sanitation Ecosystem (NAMASTE), Social Justice and Empowerment Minister Virendra Kumar said the plan aims to eliminate fatalities during the manual entering and cleaning of sewers and septic tanks – known as manual scavenging – through measures such as better enforcement of the law at national, state and urban local body (ULB) level. He added the plan would also seek to ensure all sanitation work involving the removal of human excreta from locations like sewers is carried out by skilled workers.

Photograph: Marcel Crozet ILO Photos News/Flickr

In a statement to the Lok Sabha on 19 July, Kumar said the NAMASTE project aimed to achieve several outcomes, including ensuring that sanitation workers do not come into direct contact with human faecal matter and raising awareness among institutions and individuals to only contract registered and skilled sanitation workers to undertake the cleaning of sewers and septic tanks.

He added the government also aimed to ensure that sanitation workers are “collectivised into SHGs [self-help groups] and… empowered to run sanitation enterprises”, and ensure “all sewer and septic tank sanitation workers have access to alternative livelihoods”.

According to the Economic Times, the plan will begin with a survey and questionnaire in around 500 cities aimed at identifying and creating a database of all workers involved in the cleaning of faecal matter from locations like septic tanks and drains and the operation and maintenance of sanitation installations, like sewer networks, wastewater treatment plants and public and institutional toilets, in urban areas.

During the survey, contractors will be asked to share details of the sanitation workers employed by them, and the government hopes the database will make it easier to both hold the contractors accountable for the safety of the sewer workers they employ and link the workers to the social benefits they are entitled to, the newspaper reported.

The Economic Times also reported that sanitation workers will be given training on “safe sanitation enterprises using mechanised equipment”, and funding will be offered to sanitation workers and private sanitation service providers to enable them to buy sanitation equipment, including mechanised equipment.

Meanwhile, in his statement to the Lok Sabha on 19 July, minister Kumar revealed that a laboratory of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has developed a mechanised sewage cleaning system capable of cleaning blockages in 300-millimetre sewer lines. This would avoid the need for workers to enter sewers, where there is a risk of being overcome by poisonous gases.

Kumar said the system features a variety of technology, including a high-pressure multi-jet cleaning system “to suit the tough Indian blockage conditions” and a collection bucket to remove the silt from the manhole. It is designed for use by urban and local bodies with a population of 5,000.

“The technology has been transferred to industries for its production and commercialisation,” explained Kumar.   

He added: “The government takes a serious cognizance of the deaths occurring due to hazardous cleaning of sewers and septic tanks and non-observance of safety precautions as prescribed under the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Rules, 2013.”

The announcement of the NAMASTE project came as the government revealed that as many as 347 people are thought to have died while cleaning sewers and septic tanks in India in the past five years.

Responding to a question raised by two Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) parliamentarians Subrat Pathak and Manoj Tiwari in Lok Sabha, minister Kumar said on 19 July that 92 sewer deaths were recorded in 2017, 67 in 2018, 116 in 2019, 19 in 2020, 36 in 2021 and 17 deaths so far in 2022.

The minister also provided a breakdown of the reported deaths by state during the period from 2017 to mid-2022, with Uttar Pradesh seeing the highest number of fatalities at 51, followed by Tamil Nadu (48) and Delhi (44). The highest number of deaths in a single state occurred in Uttar Pradesh in 2019 when 26 sewer workers died.

Of the 17 reported deaths so far in 2022, the highest number occurred in Tamil Nadu (5) followed by Uttar Pradesh (4).

Meanwhile, in a separate written statement to Lok Sabha on 26 July, Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment Shri Ramdas Athawale revealed that since 1993, a total of 966 people are thought to have died while cleaning sewers.

He added that government surveys conducted in 2013 and 2018 estimated there are over 58,000 ‘manual scavengers’ in India, including sewer workers and those who remove and handle human waste from locations like dry latrines in homes and public places, open pits and railway tracks, where excreta is discharged from the toilets of trains.

However, Bezwada Wilson, from Safai Karmachari Andolan, a nationwide movement that campaigns to end the entire practice of manual scavenging and the manual cleaning of sewers, slammed the government statistics on sewer deaths as “lies”.

Wilson, who has long argued that the number of sewer deaths is seriously under-reported, tweeted: “Government under-reports in Parliament deaths in sewers and septic tanks in last five years by 35 per cent. Saving lives would have been easier than fudging data.”  

Although the “hazardous” cleaning of sewers and septic tanks by entering them and removing human waste by hand without using “protective gear and other cleaning devices” is banned under the 2013 Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, the practice remains widespread across India.  

A 2019 study by the World Health Organization said: “Weak legal protection and lack of enforcement of the laws, as well as the poor financial status of sanitation workers, contributes to the practice still prevailing.”   

Manual scavengers are at risk of death from asphyxiation due to poisonous gases and are often exposed to diseases such as cholera, hepatitis, meningitis, jaundice, skin disorders and even cardiovascular diseases. They often lack access to proper safety gear and equipment.

The work is mostly undertaken by members of the Dalit caste, who are at the bottom of India's archaic caste system.

Read the Indian government’s Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for Cleaning of Sewers and Septic Tanks.