Mumbai : Three labourers working in a Mulund sewer died of poisonous gases at 3 am on Sunday. The fire brigade managed to save the lives of four others who had entered the main sewer that runs along the Eastern Express highway and ends at the Bhandup sewage pumping station. While three of them were discharged, one of them is still admitted at Rajawadi hospital.
The names of deceased are Sonu Pradhan (32), Dhanaksh Samadhi (30) and Ramkishan Dinsmat (47). The hospitalised labourer has been identified as Santosh Sahu.
The labourers were on contract with Sriram EPC Ltd. The Kanjur Marg police is investigating the incident. The fire brigade’s rescue operation lasted three hours.
The BMC clarified that it had told the contractor not to send men into the sewer. “The work of a new sewer line in Bhandup Centre was postponed till October. As a supplementary measure in this work, an underground wall was being constructed to stop flow of the sewer line. A JCB machine was to be employed for breaking this wall from outside the manhole. But the contractor who was awarded the work tried to do this work by sending labourers through manhole which resulted into the tragedy,’’ said Sunil Sardar, executive engineer of the sewage department.
He added that action would be initiated to register an offence against the contractor, Shriram EPC Ltd.
Mumbai’s 1,500 km long sewer lines are cleaned manually by 4, 000 labourers using rudimentary equipment such as iron rods and bamboo sticks.
In 1996, following a Bombay High Court order to safeguard manhole workers’ rights, the BMC issued safety guidelines, listing the provision of earplugs, goggles for eye protection, oxygen masks, hand gloves, gumboots for workers entering manholes. According to Jan Jagruti, a non-government organisation, 19 out of 22 guidelines are violated.
According to a study by the Tata Institute of Social Science (TISS), about 80 per cent of sewer workers die before the age of 60. The Safai Kamgar Vikas Sangh, one of the BMC conservancy workers’ unions, learnt through the use the Right to Information Act that around 25 conservancy workers engaged in cleaning and sanitation by the Mumbai civic body die every month, while on their employment tenure.
Sachin Unhalekar
