CHENNAI: State is to have a survey to ‘identify and rehabilitate manual scavengers who have been or are still engaged in servicing insanitary latrines’ following an order by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment earlier this month.
State and district nodal officers are to be identified to help carry out the survey, that is to be completed by the end of March. An order undersigned by G Latha Krishna Rao, secretary, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, stated that the district-wise survey would be carried out to enable the government to provide rehabilitation benefits to the liberated manual scavengers and their families.
The survey is to be based on the data of the Ministry of Drinking Water & Sanitation on January 4 that stated that there were still 17,982 sanitary latrines, 3429 households with night soil removed manually and 10395 households with the night soil disposed into open drains and 4,158 households where night soil is serviced by animals.
Senior officials of the Greater Chennai Corporation on Tuesday listened to the grievances of sanitary workers and group-D workers at the Amma Maligai in the presence of National Safai Karamchari Commission member Jagadish Hiremani.
“Various schemes for the benefit of safai karmacharis were discussed and the officials have been instructed by the NSKC Commission member to strictly implement the schemes and to conduct more workshops,” Corporation Commissioner D Karthikeyan told presspersons after the review meeting. Four aspects, education for children of manual scavengers, providing housing and medical facilities for them and ensuring minimum wages were discussed in detail, he added.
Jagadish Hiremani said after the meeting that he had asked for the officials to increase the level of awareness to avoid deaths of manual scavengers by exploring other avenues, like roping in celebrities to convey the message.