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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | They still clean toilets and can't bear their own stink -Sukanya Shantha

They still clean toilets and can't bear their own stink -Sukanya Shantha

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published Published on Jul 25, 2013   modified Modified on Jul 25, 2013
-The Indian Express


Pandharpur: Jaya Waghela, 52, spends more than an hour cleaning herself every morning. But the soap and water cannot wash off the stench of human faeces she cleans everyday with her broom at 600-odd public toilets along the banks of the river Bhima in Pandharpur district of Maharashtra.

"The stench is so overbearing that it has killed my appetite," says Waghela, who has stayed away from her kitchen since she began working as a manual scavenger 20 years ago. It was then that the Centre enacted the Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act, which bans such scavenging.

For Waghela, who starts her day before the break of dawn, work is at its toughest this time of the year, when nearly 10 lakh pilgrims gather at Pandharpur for the Ashadi Ekadashi Yatra.

Nearly 700 persons of the Mehtar community are assigned the job of cleaning the 800 dry latrines that cater to the lakhs of pilgrims. While 363 of the 700 are permanent workers, the others are appointed on contract.

"As they are not officially recruited, they are at the mercy of the civic authorities," says social activist Pradip More who, along with Satara-based activist Sandeep Jhedhe, convened a "campaign against manual scavenging" in 2011.

Though the law prohibits engaging manual scavengers, the Pandharpur council says it had no other option for cleaning the toilets. This it declared in an affidavit last August in the Bombay High Court, submitted in response to a public interest litigation against the practice. "If human waste is not cleaned properly, there is a serious likelihood of air and water contamination," Shrikant Mycalwar, district project officer in the Solapur collectorate, said in the affidavit.

In 2008, responding to a complaint filed with the State Human Rights Commission, the state had claimed that unless conservancy workers were deployed it would lead to an epidemic that would spread even to the neighbouring states of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.

The practice is an age-old one though the Pandharpur Municipal Council has renamed the workers safai karamcharis. "Only the expression has been changed. My community continues to clean human waste," says Guru Dhodiya, 29, who is literate and who decided early in life he would break free from the shackles binding his community. His mother and brother continue to work as manual scavengers with the civic body.

Waghela and Dhodiya, both of the Mehtar community, hail originally from Gujarat. The British had brought 210 Mehtar families to Pandharpur district as bonded labourers some 150 years ago. Their descendants continue to live in a ghetto, Gujarati Colony, built by the municipal council.

The families there still pay the state house rent. The community protested against this during last year's yatra. "We were promised the government will swiftly transfer these houses to our names. That has not yet happened," says Rajan Goyal, a graduate and a new recruit at the municipal council.

"This is the only department where we face no competition for the job from people of other castes and classes," adds Goyal, from whose family four generations have worked with the municipal council now.

Last week, when Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan was in Pandharpur, a few community representatives met him with their grievances, housing being the primary concern. "We were promised, as usual, that appropriate action would be taken," Dhodhiya says.

According to the Ministry for Social Justice, Maharashtra has 64,785 human excreta carriers, the second highest after Madhya Pradesh with 81,307. "The condition of safai karamcharis in Maharashtra is deplorable. Earlier this year, the vice chairperson of the National Commission for Schedules Castes [Raj Kumar Verka], was specially assigned the task of looking into the conditions in Maharashtra," says P L Puniya, chairperson of NCSC. He says he will call for a report on Pandharpur immediately.


The Indian Express, 25 July, 2013, http://www.indianexpress.com/news/they-still-clean-toilets-and-cant-bear-their-own-stink/1146207/0


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