Hole to Hell: Murder in Manholes | Anita Ratnam

Published on 17-11-2008 In General

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Hole to Hell: Murder in Manholes

The deaths of two sewer cleaners, Narasimhamurthy and Amaresh , on Friday morning at Yelahanka New Town comes as a rude and shocking reminder about the under belly of Bruhat Bangalore. Not only did the two workers die a gruesome gasping death in a drain filled with human and industrial wastes, auto driver Srinivas who so kindly to tried to rescue them, also perished in a matter of minutes.

The incident will soon be forgotten as a freak accident where "safety precautions" were suddenly and momentarily forgotten. After all it happened on a day when India was celebrating our technological progress and prowess in lunar orbits with the Tricolour landing on the moon. Yet a permanent amnesia about what actually happens in our subterranean sewers, tells another story.

Every town and city has thousands of kilometres of underground sewers with hundreds of man-holes meant for cleaning and maintenance of these stench filled drains. For instance Delhi has 6000 kms of drains with 1.5 lakh manholes and Chennai has 2800 kilometres of drains with 80,000 manholes. Almost 100 percent of the 1.1 million sewer cleaners who enter the manholes for their cleaning and unclogging are from the lowest rungs of the scheduled castes- the valmikis, bhangis, madigas and other communities who traditionally have been dumped with scavenging tasks.

These underground drains where faeces, factory wastes, condoms, sanitary pads, kitchen wastes, glass, placentas and construction debris, cleaning acids, wasted paints etc mix, often get clogged and create putrid toxic rivers. Not only are the liquids themselves toxic, the concentrations and deathly cocktails of Hydrogen Sulphide, Carbon dioxide, Carbon monoxide as well as Methane and other oxygen suppressants that are produced, convert the sewers into virtual gas chambers. For those who enter, death- in seconds or over a few years is certain.

The Safai Kamgar Vikas Sangh, a body representing sanitation workers of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), using the Right to Information Act found that 288 workers had died in 2004-05, 316 in 2003-04, and 320 in 2002-03, in just 14 of the 24 wards of the BMC. About 25 deaths every month! Studies in Delhi in 2004 revealed that in just one and half months, 10 labourers died while cleaning sewers.

The CEC study Hole to Hell (2005) of 200 manhole workers in Delhi found that more than 90% of them had severe eye infections, skin ailments and respiratory tract problems. More shocking is that their average life span was found to be only 45 years. All studies emphasise that death inside sewers as well as injuries, illness and premature deaths are endemic and pervasive.

So how do we as a society understand and deal with this murder in manholes? Municipal corporations and the equivalents of our BWSSB attempt to duck the issue by outsourcing sewer cleaning operations to contractors.

Contractors abdicate responsibility by appointing them as daily wage labour so that long term issues are never addressed and deaths are fobbed off as accidents with paltry compensations which sometimes never get paid.

Tragically the beldars and Safai Karamchari Unions are still fighting for basics like

Rs 30 for soap and water to wash themselves, when they emerge from the drains. They have not really linked their ill health to their occupations or demanded minimum safety gear like bubble suits and oxygen masks etc. Contractors and officials have convinced them that if a candle can remain burning at the mouth of a manhole and if the cockroaches inside are alive, they too will emerge safely! The fact that the candle test is not adequate or that some of these gases are explosive is blithely ignored.

The National Human Rights Commission and High Courts in Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai have occasionally pulled up the Corporations and Sewerage Boards demanding that compensation be paid to families of those who die cleaning manholes. They have also instructed that workers be provided with safety belts, gloves, torches and soaps- none of which are of help if you emerge dead or dying.

While there is a 1993 Act for Prohibition of Employment of Manual Scavengers in cleaning dry latrines, it is a cruel irony that sewer cleaners who almost dive into or swim in sewage, are not clearly recognised as modern "scavengers". Further insult lies in the fact that even in the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, the immersion of a dalit into a manhole is not defined as a caste atrocity and an affront to human dignity, when in reality no other caste is actually sent into sewers.

That leaves sewer cleaners to fight their complex battle in terms of occupational health hazards or in terms of rights as contract labourers. Sewer Cleaners Unions, Dalit organisations and human rights groups are grappling with these difficulties. While some are in favour of asking for better working conditions, others want manual sewer cleaning to be banned on the grounds of both safety and dignity.

Today technology has ensured that kinetic pulse sewer cleaning systems, hydro static systems with pumps and reservoirs, power bucket type sewer cleaners, manhole roller jacks, gully suction emptiers and drills are all available for clearing clogged sewers. Only recently the Chennai High Court has directed Metrowater to bar entry of workers into sewers. It has instructed that machines be deployed to clean sewers, that buildings be constructed with diaphragms to prevent solid waste from entering and clogging sewers.

Surely, it is neither difficult to invest on machines nor impossible to train today's impoverished, dying and abused sewer cleaners to operate these machines. How long will disregard for life, caste attitudes and greed for profits ensure that we don't deploy technology where it is needed the most?

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