[WSMDiscuss] Precarious Living and Working Condition of Sanitation Workers

[Umakant]

Dear Friends

Greetings! How the government and society at large dealswith sanitation workers should keep haunting us again and again about the needfor humanizing ourselves, our society and government as well. Instead of doingthis, what we witness every day is complete dehumanization of sanitationworkers as if their lives do not matter at all. This happens despite the factthat they are the frontline warriors who fight every day with dirt anddangerous elements to keep us alive, safe and ticking. 

 

On the links given below you could read about the precariousconditions under which our sanitation workers in India have been doing theirwork. The stigma attached with work and the caste that they belong to keepsthem at the receiving end and on the margins in every sense of the term.   

 

Even before the coronavirus pandemic their living conditionswere in a sorry state of affairs. And with the continuing pandemic, they arefurther exposed to dangers of working without enough safety kits/equipments asmost of them work with bare hands and minimum protection.

 

Do pass it on to others in your circle/network. 

 

At COVID Frontlines: ‘Few SanitationWorkers Getting Training, Info On Health Checkups’

ShreehariPaliath, IndiaSpend.com, July 30, 2020 

https://www.indiaspend.com/at-covid-frontlines-few-sanitation-workers-getting-training-info-on-health-checkups/

 

India has now reported morethan 1.5 million COVID-19 cases, making it the country with the third-highestnumber of cases in the world after the US and Brazil. But even as thecontagion surges across the country, sanitation workers continue to beinadequately protected, noted a report based on a telephonicsurvey of 214 sanitation workers in five states and two metros by twoindependent researchers.

 

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What’s in a name? Stigma and shame, say the residentsof Tiruchy’s Drainage Street

Jose K Joseph,Express News Service, July 30, 2020 

https://www.newindianexpress.com/states/tamil-nadu/2020/jul/30/whats-in-a-name-stigma-and-shame-say-the-residents-of-tiruchys-drainage-street-2176988.html

 

The street is said tohave been so named as the Corporation’s sanitation workers lived here. A signof the vicious cycle of caste, occupation and stigma, most of those workerswere Dalit. 

 

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COVID-19: How distant laws, uneven measures afflictsanitation workers

SonamKumari and Barathi Nakkeeran, Opinion, Down to Earth, July 27, 2020 

https://www.downtoearth.org.in/blog/health/covid-19-how-distant-laws-uneven-measures-afflict-sanitation-workers-72502

 

The pandemic has further aggravated the dichotomy oflivelihood and safety of sanitation workers 

 

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With Regards 

Umakant, Ph. D 

New Delhi 

 









My final words of advice to you are educate, agitate and organize; have faith in yourself. With justice on our side I do not see how we can lose our battle. The battle to me is a matter of joy. The battle is in the fullest sense spiritual. There is nothing material or social in it. For ours is a battle not for wealth or for power. It is battle for freedom. It is the battle of reclamation of human personality. 
B.R.Ambedkar
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