Health, Safety and Well-Being of Workers in the Informal Sector in India by Sigamani Panneer & Sanghmitra S. Acharya & Nagarajan Sivakami

Author:Sigamani Panneer & Sanghmitra S. Acharya & Nagarajan Sivakami
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789811384219
Publisher: Springer Singapore

Invisibility and Vulnerability of Sanitation and Allied Workers

The data on house listing and housing in Census 2011 will continue to embarrass the government for its failure to eliminate manual scavenging. The Census data shows 8 lakh people are engaged in clearing night soil by hand. It cannot be more shameful than this for the governments to remain in denial mode. The Dignity Campaign- Action for Liberation of Dalit Manual Scavenger Women in India (Jan Sahas 2015) studied 10000 women manual scavengers in 15 districts of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh during 2013–2015 to understand their economic and political rights. The study reflected that 70% women got into manual scavenging after marriage, while 30% were forced into it since childhood. Women were paid much lesser than men and often the amount was not fixed in many places. Most of them earned less than 2000 INR per month. Half of the manual scavenging families had no other source of income. The share of such families was as high as 83% in Uttar Pradesh. Only 2% of manual scavenging families had land holdings; and only 1% was involved in agriculture for additional income. Remunerations of these workers are meager and work guaranteed is nil. Municipal corporation workers get 150 INR per day and those working as contractual workers get between 40 and 50 INR a day. They are often employed for more than 8 hours and paid accordingly anything between 300 and 1500 INR per month.

As regards the protective gears and equipment, in most developed nations, workers are protected in bunny suits to avoid contact with contaminated water and sport a respiratory apparatus. Sewers are well-lit, mechanically aerated with huge fans and therefore are not oxygen deficient. In Hong Kong, a sewer worker, after adequate training, needs at least 15 licenses and permits to enter a manhole. The entry-level salary of a sanitation worker in New York is $30000 per year. In the sixth year, he could earn $67141 (2.18 lakh INR per month). In India your license to become a sewer worker is the all-pervasive caste identity! In India, the worker wears nothing more than a loincloth or half pants. Permanent workers wear a ‘safety belt’ which helps haul them out when they faint or die inside the sewer. In India, a permanent sanitation worker with 20 years’ experience is likely to make 12000 INR a month.

Social Identity: All Safai Karamcharis (workers engaged in sewerage and allied works) are from the Dalit communities. This is the reason why their vulnerability is exploited by the people as well as the state. While environment and its conservation has caught everyone’s attention; and there is evident concern for the users of sewerage and allied work by way of provisioning of and access to toilets, reduction in open defecation, Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) and other programmes like provisioning of safe drinking water and clean drains, the concern for sewerage and allied service providers is absent. The plight of these people has not drawn much attention from the required sectors.

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