The faceless ghosts who clean our shit

India has approximately 5 million waste workers all cleaning different types of waste, ranging from residential to public waste, coming into daily contact with disease and ailments. Of the various roles they are forced to play, – manual scavenging is perhaps the worst and most dangerous of them all.

Today, the growing urban populace is living in a world where giant skyscrapers rub shoulders with shanties and where the daily pressures on sewage collection are a constant threat to inhabitants’ health and wellbeing. In all this, it is difficult to focus on who is responsible for ensuring that our cities are kept clean and free of garbage. We take it for granted this is the government’s problem and while this is largely true, who does the work? As a lot of this work is manually done are they given the right tools to do their jobs? Most importantly are they considered a part of mainstream society in India? Who are these faceless ghosts?

Under the “Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013 (MS Act, 2013)” which has come into force with effect from 06.12.2013, the claim of any person of being a manual scavenger is to be verified by the local authority for inclusion in the list of identified manual scavengers to become eligible for rehabilitation as per the provisions of the MS Act, 2013. 

However, the data on sanitation workers available—both numbers and access to benefits—is inconsistent, primarily because a uniform definition of sanitation work is not consistently applied across the country. 

While the government has undertaken various steps to curb inhumane practices and prevent deaths of sanitation workers through policy directives as well as actual on ground implementation such as the Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs (MoHUA) advisory in July 2019, establishing Emergency Response Sanitation Units (ERSU) in urban areas to ensure manual cleaning of sewer/septic tank only through trained and appropriately equipped sanitation workers, and MOHUA’s Safaimitra Suraksha Challenge in 20-21 to encourage ULBs to focus on social and occupational safety of sanitation workers and the Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment and MoHUA’s joint launch of the National Action for Mechanized Sanitation Ecosystem (NAMASTE) for improving the safety of sanitation workers in 500 AMRUT cities in phase-I, there is still very little public recognition of this problem by civic society across all states. 

Deeper involvement of the private sector can go a long way in improving the quality of lives of millions of vulnerable sanitation workers. Some of the following crucial areas provide a huge scope for contribution from the private sector:

1. Enumeration of sanitation workers: Sanitation workers remain a largely invisible workforce as most of them provide services informally. Their employers provide them with no contracts, thus leaving them vulnerable to exploitation. These workers are also difficult to find if government stakeholders like NSKFDC want to provide them with benefits.
2. Establishing an Innovation Hub- SHWAS Hub:  The private sector agencies can play a collaborative role in establishing an innovation hub- Sanitation Workers’ Health and Safety (SHWAS- meaning breath in Sanskrit) hub to enable innovation for safety equipment and machines thereby, ensuring occupational safety to avoid mortality and morbidity of sanitation workers.
3. Increasing awareness for behaviour change: Sanitation workers usually lose 10 years of their lives as compared to an average Indian due to continuous exposure to harmful gases and microorganisms. 90% of sanitation workers die even before reaching the age of 60 years. It is critical that both the service providers and the service seekers are aware of the risks and hazards involved in performing various sanitation jobs. 
4. Providing access to PPE and safety devices: PPE is the last line of defence of sanitation workers against occupational hazards. Corporates can provide under-resourced ULBs with customized PPE kit to each sanitation worker, depending on the job requirements. While providing the kit, the gender and physique of the worker should also be kept in mind to ensure provision of appropriate and adequate PPE items.
5. Capacity building of stakeholders: The sanitation work in India can be made safer if capacities of local governments, private contractors and sanitation workers are enhanced. Thus, corporates can tie up with local and regional training institutes like RSETI to deliver occupational safety skilling training.
6. Support for alternative livelihoods: Sanitation work is intergenerational, with workers trapped in the cycle of helplessness and poverty.  Private sector agencies can link these workers with appropriate skilling programs to improve their technical and soft skills. This will increase their employability in other sectors and help the workers to climb the socioeconomic ladder.
7. Creation of hygiene lounges: Access to WASH facilities is a basic human right that every sanitation worker deserves. Thus, the private sector can provide accessible hygiene lounges that has provision for sanitation workers to clean their PPE and themselves after completion of work. 
8. Granting of Rights: Nearly all sanitation workers are contract workers and are required to engage for work through contractors and not directly with the ULB.   Employment of sanitation workers ideally should be done directly by the ULB and not through 3rd party providers thus making them visible in the government databases and eligible for the benefits that they are entitled to.
9. Mental Health: Given the extreme conditions that they work, there is a pressing need for counselling and regular health checkups to be conducted for them till they are exposed to the hazardous conditions of their work. 

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