Early this month, 40-year-old S Subramani took his own life. The BBMP pourakarmika had not been paid for seven months and he had been struggling to pay his children’s school expenses, and could not afford a shoe for his 10-year-old son. Bengaluru has about 20,000 unhappy sweepers, who survive untold hardships.
They are denied their salaries and access to basic facilities such as clean toilets and healthcare. They are vulnerable to sexual harassment and are exposed to illnesses on every work day. Through it all, their employer -- the BBMP -- remains infuriatingly indifferent. TNIE in a six-part series, starting today, highlights the pourakarmikas’ life stories.
BENGALURU:A horrifying fact in cosmopolitan Bengaluru, which is on the global map for IT and related services, is that women in the crucial segment of the working society — the pourakarmikas, or the civic sweepers and cleaners who ensure that the city remains clean — have no place to go when they got to go. There are no public toilets easily accessible to them when they need to use one.
It’s a lesser-known fact that is common among women pourakarmikas is that they avoid drinking water as there are no public toilets in the Mahadevapura zone where they sweep. The common consequence being diseases like urinary tract infection or kidney stones. “If we have to go out in the open, the supervisor/contractor doesn’t let us,” Shankaramma says.
Now, 45-year-old Shankaramma in Doddanekundi (ward 85) needs `1.5 lakh to get her kidney stones removed at a private hospital in Kurnool. She has been a pourakarmika with the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) for less than three years if the Palike records are to be believed.
She was diagnosed in the neighbouring state of Andhra Pradesh because her family simply did not have the money to get her treated in a private hospital in Bengaluru. “If we had an ESI card the treatment would be free but although we have been told we have been regularised and have got a PF number, we haven’t been given an ESI card,” Shankaramma says at her shed near Ryan International School, Kundalahalli. They pay Rs. 2,500 rent monthly to the landowner. Her family has two sheds.
Every day she rests at home recuperating, she suffers loss of pay. She hasn’t been going to work for two weeks now. To add to her woes, she has diabetes, low blood pressure and has a rod in her left arm because of an injury she sustained while working. Her medicines cost her `6,500, and they will run out soon. Every day she swallows 13 pills.
“I cannot bend, I cannot walk for long distances and I cannot lift weights. My right hip pains constantly,” Shankaramma says. She is surrounded by 100 other pourakarmikas who stay in sheds in the vicinity.
Her story is straight out of the script of woes of every pourakarmika in the city -- no gloves, no mask, no broom, no boots. “At 10.30 am, when we go to give the biometric attendance for the second time, we are given food by BBMP but even drinking the buttermilk that is made out of some readymade powder gives us loose motion,” she says. “There have been instances when we have been given water from the toilet when we asked for drinking water from the residents,” she rues.
Her husband, Bheemanna, 56, and two of her daughters-in-law are also pourakarmikas, none of them have health insurance. They all have bank accounts that have been opened by the BBMP in Corporation Bank. Their family’s out-of-pocket health expenditure is compounded by the fact that her grandson five-year-old Lakshmanna requires a heart operation. They have heard of AP’s Arogyashree card provided to BPL families but are unaware of the state’s Arogya Karnataka card.
Bheemanna says, “Nobody in the Palike ensures that we are enrolled in government health insurance schemes. We have loans worth `5 lakh that we took for my wife and grandson. The money lender takes `10 interest on every `100 he loans us.”