One manual scavenging death every five days: Official data -Shalini Nair

-The Indian Express

Data obtained by The Indian Express shows that only 109 of the 170 districts have filed their response, and only 62 have identified at least one manual scavenger.

New Delhi: SINCE JANUARY 1, 2017, one person has died every five days, on an average, while cleaning sewers and septic tanks across the country, according to numbers collated by the National Commission for Safai Karamcharis (NCSK), the statutory body that was set up by an Act of Parliament for the welfare of sanitation workers.

The data, which is based mostly on newspaper reports and numbers supplied by a few state governments, is the first such official attempt to account for the deaths of sewer and septic tank cleaners.

According to NCSK, 123 people employed in hazardous forms of manual scavenging lost their lives while at work since January 2017. The last one week alone has seen a total of six deaths in the National Capital Region. Officials involved in the exercise admit, however, that even this number could be a gross under-estimation, considering the lack of data.

There are no numbers available on those employed in sewer and septic tank cleaning. All previous and ongoing exercises at compiling data have been restricted to accounting for those removing human excreta from dry latrines, open drains, and single pit toilets in villages.

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