Two die while cleaning sewer in Gujarat, say police

Ahmedabad:

Two sanitation workers who had gone down a manhole to clean sludge in Dholka town of Ahmedabad district, Gujarat, died due to suffocation, police said on Sunday. The incident took place on Saturday evening.

The two workers, identified as Gopal Padhar (24) and Bijal Padhar (32), fell unconscious after entering the sewage pipeline. They were rushed to a hospital where doctors declared them dead, said an officer at Dholka police station.

A first information report was registered at the police station against contractors Ashiq Thakor and Jagdish Thakor under Indian Penal Code section 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder), as well as under relevant provisions of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, the officer said, declining to be named.

The Gujarat government recently informed the legislative assembly that 11 sanitation workers died of asphyxiation while cleaning drains in different parts of the state in the past two years. On April 6, three sanitation workers died in Dahej town of Bharuch district in a similar incident.

Hiren Banker, spokesperson of the Gujarat Congress pradesh committee, wrote to the National Human Rights Commission on April 23 following the recent deaths.

The two sanitation workers were forced to enter a sewer without any protective gear that led to their deaths, according to Banker. Despite the illegality of this practice and the existence of laws to prohibit it, manual scavenging continues to claim lives of countless sanitation workers across the country, he wrote in the letter to the commission.

“In the last three decades, government statistics data show that Gujarat stood second in death of sanitation workers in the country,” Banker said. “The NHRC has a vital role to play in this regard and I urge you to take immediate action to address this issue.”

“In Gujarat and in other states, there has been a significant rise in the number of deaths due to manual scavenging in recent years,” he said in the letter. ”It is unacceptable that people are forced to engage in such hazardous and degrading work and that their lives are put at risk every day.”