The Supreme Court, in its order dated January 30, had decided to impose a complete ban on carrying sewage on the head and getting down into gutters to work.
Despite this, just four days later, three workers died in Kolkata’s ‘Leather Complex’, while two more people lost their lives in Nandigram.
After this incident, the Supreme Court summoned the Chief Executive Engineer of the ‘Kolkata Municipal Area Development Authority’ and sought a response from the government.
The Supreme Court clearly said that this practice is a violation of Articles 17 and 21 of the Constitution and it is very important to end it completely.
Supreme Court’s order and legal status
The Supreme Court had said in its order on January 30 that despite the ban for two decades, this practice is continuing, even though the ‘Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrine (Prohibition) Act, 1993’ already exists for this.
The court also said that due to its intervention, the government had to amend this law in 2013, so that it could be made more stringent.
The Supreme Court said in its order that information should be collected about all the workers who have died while doing this work from 1993 till now and the victim families should be given Rs 10 lakh as compensation.
The court made it clear that the monitoring of the apex court is not necessary, but the state governments will have to make efforts to end it at their own level and strict legal action will have to be taken against the violators.
But people lost their lives even after the order
Despite the orders, comments, and instructions of the country’s top court, people in West Bengal have lost their lives due to this ‘practice’. The case is of Kolkata’s ‘Leather Complex’, where three workers died after getting into the gutter and being exposed to poisonous gas.
A similar incident happened in Nandigram, West Bengal, where two people died while cleaning a private house, and the house owner was admitted to the hospital in critical condition.
So far only one contractor has been arrested in connection with the Kolkata incident, but he soon got bail.
The workers claim that the cleaning machines of Kolkata Municipal Corporation were not working properly, due to which sewage had accumulated.
The West Bengal government announced a compensation of Rs 10 lakh each for the affected families, but the families say that this cannot compensate for their lives.
What are those who lost their loved ones saying?
The dead workers were from Sandeshkhali and Murshidabad, who had gone to Kolkata in search of employment. The distance between Kolkata and Sandeshkhali is about 50 km. One of the dead, 32-year-old Suman Sardar, was from the tribal-dominated Patnipara of this area. His father cannot see, and his old mother is still unable to believe the news of her son’s death.
Suman’s mother says while crying, “I had only one son. I also have a daughter. Before going to work, he had said, Mother, I will come on the day of Saraswati Puja. Now there is no one to work in our house. Who will go and earn for us? They (the government) should give a job to my daughter-in-law. I am old now.”
Suman’s father Dayal Sardar comes to us with the help of a stick, feeling the wall and sitting next to us, saying that he never allowed his son to go far away.
He said, “I did not let him go out. I used to tell him that you are a complete fool. Do some labour work here, we will manage with that. But he did not listen to me. He went to Kolkata with other boys.”
Suman’s wife Sonamoni Sardar said that they have four children, all girls, and the eldest daughter is 12 years old.
She said, “He did not do this work of cleaning sewers. He did not know anything about it. The people who took him for labor forced him to do this work. I want them to be punished for this.”
The distance between Sandeshkhali and Murshidabad is about 250 kilometers. Two more people also died in the same accident in Ayarmadi Panchayat of Murshidabad.
One of them was Hasibur Sheikh. Hasibur was recently married, and at the time of the incident, his wife was at her maternal home.
Hasibur’s mother Tasmira Bibi, who is quite old, is still in shock. She has three other young sons, of whom Hasibur was the second son.
She said, “One of my sons asked me, mother, what happened to Hasibur? I said I don’t know anything. You ask your elder brother. Then the middle son talked to the elder son on the phone, but no call came. I kept sitting with my phone in my hand. Then the elder son called. He said, ‘Mother, Hasibur is no more in this world’.”
Sheikh Lutfur Rahman, a resident of this village, has been cleaning sewage gutters for many years. He used to do this work in Kolkata, but now he has left it.
He said, “It is not easy to get down into the gutter, because poisonous gas keeps coming out from inside it. If someone faints once, it is difficult for him to survive.”
Lutfur was also present there on the day of the incident. He said, “All three workers had already gone into the manhole. By the time I reached, two had died. Hasibur also quickly went down to save them, but he immediately fell unconscious and then stopped breathing.”
Different statements of the Tannery Association and workers
The question is who were the people who were forcing the workers into this dangerous work?
The government said that the workers were working under a contractor. West Bengal’s Urban Development Minister Firhad Hakim, under whom the ‘Kolkata Municipal Area Development Authority’ comes, is surprised at the incident.
The association of tannery factories of Kolkata issued a statement saying that this cleaning work was being done under the supervision of the Chief Engineer of the ‘Kolkata Municipal Development Corporation’.
It was also said in the statement that toxic chemicals from leather factories are not thrown into the manholes.
However, no official of the Tannery Association refused to talk on this issue.
Apart from this statement, the workers working in the factories had a different opinion.
Workers gather in the morning in an area known as number 9, and from there the contractors send them to different factories for work.
A worker standing here pointed towards the road and said to us, “There is excreta, garbage, and mud all around. There is no one to see or listen to. What should we do? We go back after working in the factory, but the area is not being cleaned properly.”
Another worker said, “The cleaning machines of Kolkata Municipal Corporation do come to the complex, but the excreta and gutters are not cleaned properly. You see for yourself, where is the cleaning being done? The entire road is filled with mud, excreta, chemicals, and sewage.”
A worker said that his children always tell him that father, don’t do this work.
He said, “But what should we do? We have to earn money to run the house.”
What was said by the government, the opposition’s reaction
West Bengal government’s Urban Development Minister Firhad Hakim said that this work was going on under the supervision of the engineers and supervisors of the ‘Kolkata Municipal Area Development Authority’.
He said, “I admit that this is like hell. I have instructed the ‘Kolkata Municipal Area Development Authority’ to investigate, to find out which officers were present at the time of the incident and what was their responsibility when the workers were going inside. The police are also investigating separately.”
The main opposition party of the state, i.e. Bharatiya Janata Party, says that the economic condition in the state has now become so bad that people are forced to risk their lives just to earn some money.
BJP spokesperson Shamik Bhattacharya said, “What is the condition of the poor people of West Bengal today? This is the reason why people are doing such work without caring about their lives so that they can feed their families and children.”
The reaction of labor organizations and social workers
People working among the workers working in the gutter consider this incident to be the result of the greed of the contractors and the helplessness of the workers.
Jaigopal Dey, a worker working for sanitation workers, says, “There is a lot of poverty here. That is why such risky work is done for less money. Contractors call workers to work by lying and then send them to the gutter, where there is only death.”
At the same time, in a statement given in Parliament last year, Union Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment Ramdas Athawale said that from the year 2019 to the year 2023, the number of workers who died while working in manholes across the country was 377.
The Supreme Court has given instructions from time to time to stop this, but experts say that due to administrative negligence and the helplessness of the workers, this trend is still continuing.
