Gujarat govt flayed for 'neglect towards sanitary workers'

Ahmedabad, Sep 7 (UNI) The National Commission for Safai Karmacharis has flayed the Gujarat Government for its ''failure to provide safety measures to sanitary workers who work in sewer lines and often meet with deaths''.

Even the directions issued by the Commission and the Gujarat High Court in this regard have been ignored by the municipal corporations in the state, especially in Ahmedabad, Vadodara and Surat, Commission chairperson Santosh Chaudhary told reporters here today.

Several deaths of ''safai'' workers are reported every year when they work under the sewer lines for carrying out cleaning operations, Ms Chaudhary pointed out.

The civic bodies have failed to provide oxygen kits, special training, and medical aid to such workers despite directions from the Commission and the High Court, she said.

Referring to the state government's cleanliness drive of ''Nirmal Gujarat'', Ms Chaudhary ridiculed that welfare of sanitary workers does not figure anywhere in the Nirmal Gujarat agenda.

Ms Chaudhary alleged that the Gujarat government was sitting on a Central Government fund that had been alloted for bringing an end to manual scavenging. ''The Central Government had alloted a total of Rs 7.5 billion to various state governments to stop scavenging, and the Gujarat government had received Rs 15.5 crore as its share,'' Ms Chaudhary said. However, that amount is still lying unspent with the state government, she alleged.

The Central Government, she said, is committed to eradicate manual scavenging by March 2009.

The Commission, meanwhile, has urged the Gujarat government to raise the compensatory amount, to be paid to the next-of-kin of a deceased sanitary worker, to Rs five lakh.

UNI