88% Women Manual Scavengers Rehabilitated, Claims Centre

According to the official data that 13 states have provided to the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, the Centre has claimed to identify 11,044 women manual scavengers. Manual scavenging is the type of work where people manually clean, carry, dispose or handle in any manner human excreta from dry latrines and sewers, reported TNIE.

The Centre asserts that it has rehabilitated 88% of the recognized lot.

The data show that 94 per cent of them (10,449) live in Uttar Pradesh. The rest belong to Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand and West Bengal. The data found that 80.97 per cent of the manual scavengers are women.

However, this is not the complete picture as 16 states and seven Union Territories have not provided any data to the ministry yet.

Sixteen states and seven Union Territories have not provided any data to the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment yet

The ministry maintains that it offered one-time cash assistance of Rs 40, 000 to 9,798 women manual scavengers for rehabilitation purposes. But 1,246 women have not received any money yet as the officials are waiting to get their bank details or they have incomplete information.

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Census 2011 states that 182,505 households in rural India have at least one member doing manual scavenging.

Kerala trying to wipe out practice

Kerala is one state that has surpassed innovation in the area of manual scavenging. In the recently announced Kerala budget for 2018, finance minister Isaac Thomas is focused on putting a stop to manual scavenging in the state. Thomas declared that a robot developed by a Kozhikode resident will be used across the state to clean sewers and manholes.

Women preferred for manual scavenging

However, in UP’s Meerut, an Indian Express article revealed how women carry excreta on their head for two stale rotis a day. These women scrape of human excreta from dry latrines and collect it in a cane basket.

A Human Rights Watch research paper shows that women make up 95 per cent of all those who manually scavenge human excreta from dry latrines and public streets. People prefer women to clean their dry latrines over men. And the women only get between Rs 10 and Rs 50 every month per household. As bonus, people give stale leftover food and worn-out clothes to them.

Picture credit- Metrovaartha