Manual scavengers? Tamil Nadu unsure of numbers

At a review meeting held by National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC) on July 9, the state government claimed that there were only 210 manual scavengers in the state’s urban areas. But NCSC chairman P. L. Punia did not accept the figures provided by the State Government. He directed the government to do a resurvey and submit the number of manual scavengers in rural areas too.

The recently released socio economic caste census (SECC) data revealed that 1.8 lakh households in rural areas in the country earn their livelihood through manual scavenging. Of them, only 167 households in rural Tamil Nadu are involved in the ‘inhuman’ profession. If one goes by the Tamil Nadu Government and SECC figures, the state has 377 manual scavengers.

However, activists reject the scavengers data in the backdrop of the house-listing and Housing Census 2011 enumeration that revealed the presence of 2.03 lakh insanitary latrines in the State. Of the 1.84 crore households in the state, night soil was disposed of in open drains in 1.49 lakh cases. As many as in 27,659 households including 17,414 households in urban areas are serviced manually and 26,020 households are serviced by animals.

Activist “Paadam’ A. Narayanan, who was instrumental for the notification of the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013 in March this year, said the State Government had filed an affidavit in Madras High Court claiming that they had identified 1009 persons as manual scavengers in the state and 248 in Chennai.

“The reason for identification and enlisting of such a low number of manual scavengers is on account of inadequate publicity. There is an urgent need to undertake one more round of survey of identification of manual scavengers by providing wide publicity and by enlisting the support of all stakeholders so that no family or individual engaged in manual scavenging is left out of the rehabilitation package mandated under the Act,” he said in a letter written to the secretary of Municipal Administration and Water Supply department.

He further demanded the government to comply with a directive of the Supreme Court in April for giving compensation of Rs 10 lakh to the dependents of each of the manual scavengers who havd died in septic tanks and sewer man holes since 1993. “We have given a list of 154 workers who died in the past in Tamil Nadu. But the government confirms only 55 deaths. Even among them, the government paid compensation to only 27 victims,” he noted.

State government sources said the survey of manual scavengers is yet to be completed. “The 210 manual scavengers identified in urban areas is only a provisional data. Numbers will be finalised only after ratification by the State-level survey committee,” sources said.