Tamil Nadu keeps adding to its count of deaths caused by manual scavenging. At 144, Tamil Nadu has the highest recorded count of deaths by manual scavenging in the last 5 years and with one more added to the records, the state has 145 recorded deaths.
Ranjithkumar lost his brother Arunkumar on Monday while cleaning a septic tank in basement number 3 of the Express Avenue mall in Chennai. The brothers were asked to clean 2 water tanks and a septic tank in the Chennai mall at 10.30 p.m by a contractor named Dhandapani.
The two brothers had been working as manual scavengers for almost five years under several contractors in Chennai. Ranjithkumar with his brother Arunkumar and three others from their homes in Ice House, Chennai reached the mall and first cleaned the water tanks. Around 3 a.m, they started with the septic tank.
Ranjith got into the tank and within a half-hour, suddenly a valve in the tank opened, and sewer water flooded into the container. "It was a yellowish colour liquid and within seconds, it was up to my thigh," recalls Ranjith. "The fumes from it made me dizzy and before I could even call for help, I fainted. The last thing I heard was my brother shout 'Thambi, Thambi'," he adds.
Arun quickly jumped in to save his brother. He pulled up his brother from the container but he slipped in again. "I went back in to rescue him," says Ajithkumar. "But I myself felt dizzy because of the fumes and blanked out for five minutes. When I regained consciousness I just about managed to pull myself out," he said.
Ranjith couldn’t move after an hour of being saved but could understand the events happening around him. "Dhandapani called the mall's safety officials and told them what had happened. Instead of rescuing my brother immediately, they were squabbling over who will enter the tank," he says. "They wasted close to an hour arguing, till Dhandapani was forced to go in himself. If they had acted sooner, they could have saved my brother," he says, his voice breaking.
After an hour of struggle, however, when pulled out, Arun was dead.
All of this could have been avoided only if teh rules were followed by the authorities. The workers were asked to wear the safety mask, gloves and boots provided by Express Avenue before they started the task but weren’t allowed to wear them while at teh task.
"The contractor made us wear the safety mask, gloves and boots provided by Express Avenue and pose for a photo," says Ranjith. "After it was taken, he told us to take it all off, before going into the tank. He said it would be wasted if we used it. This was a regular practice,"
The safety gear was only provided to them to click pictures as false proof of complying with the law. Ranjith says this is not an unusual practice, the authorities do not want the safety gear to become dirty and hence, they are asked to not wear them while at work.
"We belong to a Dalit family and have faced a childhood of deprivation. So, I left school in the 6th standard and my brother in the 10th standard. We began working immediately after we dropped out," said Ranjithkumar."I am an electrician by day and Arun fixed spare parts on cars. Manual scavenging is not a regular job for us. We do it because we need the money".
D Samuel Velanganni, the Tamil Nadu State Convener of Safai Karamchari Andolan, an NGO that works for the rehabilitation of manual scavengers said that there are as many as 3,000 manual scavengers in eight cities from eight districts in Tamil Nadu.
Velanganni told The News Minute that the government is not doing enough to spread awareness on manual scavenging laws and therefore, “the numbers are unlikely to go down.”
He added, "Due to lack of programmes to spread the message, these men don't know about existing laws, that the work they are doing has been banned and that they are eligible for rehabilitation. In this year alone, 20 men have died while engaged in manual scavenging".
Manual scavenging has been assigned to the lower castes as an act of segregation and discrimination based on caste. Most of the people working as scavengers belong to the Dalit and other SC, ST communities.
