CHENNAI: It has been nine years since K Nagammal’s husband choked to death while cleaning a septic tank, but a mere mention of his name and terrible death chokes her up.
Losing the sole breadwinner of the family, her deprivation has been compounded as the compensation for his death as mandated by law remains to processed.
Nine years ago, young Nagammal came with her husband to Chennai, Kanniah from Andhra Pradesh hoping for a better future. But things turned worse for the family when Kanniah died while cleaning a septic tank manually.
Recollecting the day in which the unfortunate incident took place, Nagammal told Express, “He had left home around 8 pm without telling me where he was going. After waiting for him till midnight, I went to sleep along with our daughters. Around 4 am, my neighbour woke me up to tell me that my husband had died.”
“I fainted hearing this and was hospitalised for 15 days. When I woke up in the hospital, my elder daughter, K Shyla, who was seven-years-old, showed me a newspaper clipping that my husband along with two others died while they were manually cleaning a septic tank at a private apartment building in Pallikaranai,” Nagammal said, showing the old newspaper clipping, which she still carried in her handbag.
The Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013 mentions that for each such death, a compensation of `10 lakh should be given to the family of the deceased.
But Nagammal was unaware of this till some activists from the Safai Karamchari Andolan (SKA), a national movement committed to eradication of manual scavenging, helped her approach the government to claim the compensation amount.
But even after years of struggle, she hasn’t received the sum. “This was not the only case where the authorities refused to pay the mandated compensation to the family of the dead manual scavengers stating that the law was applicable only for deaths in manholes. But the law states clearly that all persons who died in sewer work since 1993 should be given `10 lakh compensation,” said V Samuel from Safai Karamchari Andolan.
R Emilia, who also lost her husband in the same incident said, “With no bank or money-lender ready to give me loans without a guarantee, survival has become difficult for me and my children. We are tired of answering the same questions asked by officials and the press, but nothing has changed over the years.”
Battling all odds, both Emilia and Nagammal work as contract sweepers-cum-cleaners at a leading IT firm in Tambaram so that they can pay their children’s school fees.