In a bid to meet August deadline, over 120 districts declare themselves manual scavenging free in a month

101 districts yet to submit reports, government says.

According to the latest government data, 665 out of 766 districts have declared themselves ‘manual scavenging free’- a practice banned by law through a 2013 landmark legislation. The government has said that they are vigorously pursuing the remaining 101 districts to either give declarations or provide detailed information on insanitary latrines and manual scavengers through a mobile app so that rehabilitation benefits can be extended to them.

Districts declaring themselves free of manual scavenging are doing so by first mapping insanitary latrines and then extrapolating whether the practice of manual scavenging is going on, senior government officials told The Hindu, adding that this is being done by the district-level sanitation committees. 

The new data comes amid the Supreme Court's February order to the Union Government to document its measures to stop manual scavenging. Responding to a question in the Lok Sabha, the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment had earlier said that as of August 2, a total of 639 districts had sent their self-declarations. 26 more districts have done so till now, as the government remains committed to its vision of declaring India manual-scavenging free by August 2023. The target was set in the eight central monitoring committee chaired by Social Justice Minister Virendra Kumar.

The government official further added that over 58,000 people engaged in such work previously were identified and given a one-time compensation of Rs 40,000.

Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and Rehabilitation Act, 2013 bans the use of any individual for manually cleaning, carrying, disposing of or otherwise in any manner, human excreta till its disposal.

The approach of the Union government remains that manual scavenging-by definition-is occupational, which leaves sewer and septic tank cleaning out from the purview of the Act. Unsafe sewer cleaning has killed more than 330 people in the last five years. “Unsafe sewer and septic tank cleaning are not an everyday occupation. It is done only once or twice a year and the waste in there is anyway decomposed to a certain degree,” the government official added, while attempting to justify its exclusion in classification of manual scavenging. To address the issue, the government says that they are focusing on the scheme envisioning mechanization of sewer management.

Despite 97 per cent people involved in manual scavenging belonging to Scheduled Caste communities (as per data tabled by the Parliament in December 2021), the government has repeatedly denied any role of caste, calling the work ‘occupational based’. People like Bezwada Wilson, National convener of Safai Karmchari Andolan, have stressed on the caste based nature of the occupation though, while also leading the fight for clean sanitation technology.