The has issued orders to all local bodies in Maharashtra to stop manual cleaning of septic tanks and sewage lines by safai kamgars and instead go for 100% mechanisation for cleaning them.
The state urban development (UD) department issued a government resolution (GR) to stop the practice in three months and appoint mechanised cleaning agencies for the job.
As per the Prohibition of EMPLOYMENT as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013 (MS Act, 2013), manual scavenging means manually cleaning, carrying, disposing of, or handling in any manner, human excreta in an insanitary latrine.
The prohibition was with effect from December 2013. Yet news of deaths related to manual scavenging right across the peripheries of Mumbai keep pouring in with regularity.
The Act prohibits states and Union territories to employ workers for manual scavenging of sewage and drainage lines.