The incident happened on Sunday evening at a gold factory in Azadpur’s G-Block. According to the police three men had fallen unconscious after inhaling toxic gases while cleaning a septic tank of the factory located in the GT Karnal Road Industrial Area.
Police said that the factory used to store chemicals used in making ornaments and the water used for washing in a septic tank.
“Three of the seven men cleaning the tank fell unconscious. They were taken to the BJRM Hospital. On reaching the hospital, two of them Idris and Salim both residents of Khurja in Uttar Pradesh, were declared dead,” Deputy Commissioner of Police (northwest) Vijayanta Arya said.
The labourers were not wearing any safety gear and were engaged to clean the septic tank for ? 400 each, the DCP said.
A case under relevant provisions of law has been registered and the factory owner Rajender Soni and the contractor Pramod Dangi have been arrested.
This comes even as manual scavenging continues to remain banned in Delhi.The national capital had banned the practice in August 2017 and had proposed to make the process completely mechanized.
While there are 200 sewer-cleaning machines in Delhi it is still far from the demand and in many cases, these are not accessible by households in narrow lanes.
Several industries also still use people to clean up tanks storing everything from human waste to industrial chemicals with little to no protection for the workers as it is cheaper for them. Last month, the National Commission for Safai Karamcharis (NCSK) said that a total of 631 people have died in the country while cleaning sewers and septic tanks in the last 10 years.
The figure was provided by the NCSK in response to an RTI query on the number of deaths reported while cleaning sewers and septic tanks from 2010 to March 2020.
The highest number of deaths were reported in 2019 at 115.
Among states, Tamil Nadu reported the highest number of such deaths in total in the 10-year period at 122 followed by Uttar Pradesh at 85, Delhi and Karnataka each reported 63 deaths and Gujarat reported 61 deaths.
In Haryana, 50 fatalities have been reported in the last 10 years. In 2020, two people died while cleaning sewers and septic tanks till March 31. In 2018, 73 such deaths were reported while in 2017 as many as 93 people died while cleaning sewers, the data showed.
In 2016, 55 people died while cleaning sewers and septic tanks, 62 in 2015, 52 in 2014, 68 in 2013, 47 in 2012, 37 in 2011 and 27 in 2010, it said.
The NCSK said the data is based on the information received by it from various sources and actual information may vary.
Activists said that such deaths continue to happen because of poor implementation of the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act.
Bezwada Wilson, national convener of Safai Karmachari Andolan, an organisation working to eradicate manual scavenging, said the poor implementation of the law has left the sanitation workers in a lurch.
“A single person has not been punished under the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act since its enactment. An Act should not be a false promise like an election manifesto, an Act should be what we should implement in an unequal society,” the Magsaysay award winning activist said.
Sanjeev Kumar, secretary of Dalit Adivasi Shakti Adhikar Manch (DASAM) agreed with Wilson that strict implementation of the act is the biggest issue.
A person entering inside a sewer or septic tank must be completely banned and machinery must be brought in place instead. We have such cases too where sewer workers are struggling to survive after inhaling the toxic gases inside and they are not able to regain strength. The people who survive live with a lot of pain,” he said.
Kumar said in many cases, they don’t have any proper training or equipment.
“No one is taking seriously effective implementation of the Act. There is lack of awareness that making a person entering sewer or septic tank is a crime and for that the law has to be implemented strongly,” he said