Following Backlash, Delhi PWD Removes Photos of People Cleaning Drains Without Safety Gear

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Following Backlash, Delhi PWD Removes Photos of People Cleaning Drains Without Safety Gear
Alishan Jafri
9 minutes ago
Workers, activists and court rulings indicate that rainwater drains can receive sewage, making them dangerous to clean without safety gear.
Representative image of an open manhole. Photo: Sharada Prasad CS/Flickr, CC BY 2.0
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New Delhi: For much of April and May, the Public Works Department (PWD) in New Delhi was on a social media overdrive, especially on X, where it posted a series of photographs of workers manually cleaning drains.
On Tuesday (June 3), however, it removed these photographs and cleaned its social media timelines after one of these posts went viral and caused public backlash.
In these now-deleted posts, workers could be seen cleaning drains without gloves, boots, goggles, masks or any other kind of protective gear.
In some photographs, cleaners were seen even without shirts and shoes on, raising questions about the consequences of such work for their health as well as about whether the cleaners' work could fall under the purview of manual scavenging law.
Dr Akshay Dongardive, national president of the Federation of All India Medical Associations, said: 'This can cause skin ailments [and] amplify lung infections, and long-term exposure without care or precautions may be fatal.'
Earlier this year, the Delhi government had vowed before the National Green Tribunal (NGT) to desilt 23 major drains in the state by May 31. Chief minister Rekha Gupta and PWD minister Parvesh Verma had reportedly met PWD officials last month to ensure that these deadlines were met. This is why workers all over Delhi are clearing its rainstorm drains.
In November 2024, the NGT had sought a report from the Delhi government on the action it would take to stop the flow of untreated sewage into rainwater drains.
It said that both the Delhi Jal Board and the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) 'are responsible for causing water pollution by permitting sewage of sanitary drains to be discharged in stormwater drains which ultimately pollute River Yamuna… causing health hazards.'
After the death of a five-year-old girl who drowned in a stormwater drain in Palla last year, the NGT had also observed that untreated sewage was flowing in a rainwater drain near north Delhi since no sewage system had been laid out.
The Wire visited a drain near Arjun Nagar and Hauz Khas and found that desilting work had been paused for the day on a visibly polluted drain with a punctured water supply pipe.
Three different sources at the spot said that the workers had left the site.
Locals said that the drain is desilted both manually and with machines.
This reporter met four workers at two different spots in the area who said that they did not have protective equipment to carry out cleaning work with.
Incidentally, in at least twelve photographs posted and subsequently deleted by the PWD, workers are seen without safety gear.
Three workers from Kasganj in Uttar Pradesh told The Wire that while sewage does not get mixed with rainwater drains where they work – a posh colony in south Delhi – this is not the case in other areas in the city.
Forty-five-year-old Jeet Kumar, a homeless cleaning worker who now only works private cleaning assignments, said that he quit cleaning public drains because of the dangers associated with it and the low pay – workers are paid Rs 500 for a day's work with no job security, he said.
'You never know when you can lose a limb, inhale poisonous gases, get a cut or go blind if the waste splashes in your eyes while you're working with a shovel … There can be glass pieces and metal debris,' he said.
The workers from Kasganj confirmed Jeet's claim that they are paid Rs 500 for a day's work.
'Gloves, boots and clean water are the bare necessities,' Jeet said. 'You need clean water to immediately wash the eyes if something goes in.'
Asked if they are given protective gear, a group of workers The Wire spoke with initially said yes but confirmed on the condition of anonymity that they do not receive this equipment. 'The only security equipment we have are MCD green jackets through which we can be identified by the public and police.'
Much of the cleaning is carried out by machines but is done manually in places where machines cannot go, a government source said. 'If there's sewage, why would anyone agree to do it?' he asked.
Gupta, Delhi's chief minister, has taken a similar stance. The Indian Express on Tuesday quoted her as saying: 'Look, every drain has its own situation. Machines don't work everywhere and people don't work everywhere either. There may be places where machines can't reach. Right now, the government's target is to ensure that all drains are completely cleaned, and the work is being carried out with full attention to the court's guidelines.'
While the drains in the photographs are indeed stormwater drains and, according to officials in the PWD not under the remit of manual scavenging law, worker testimonies, activists and the NGT's remarks paint a more complex picture.
Manual scavenging is officially defined as manually handling human excreta in 'insanitary latrines', in open drains or pits where such latrines discharge human excreta into, on railway tracks, or other spaces that the Union or state governments notify.
The Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and Their Rehabilitation Act, 2013 makes it illegal for someone to hire a person to do manual scavenging without providing them with devices and protective gear as mandated by the Union government.
It also separately defines the 'hazardous cleaning' of sewers and septic tanks as its manual cleaning without protective gear and cleaning devices as notified by the government. It makes it illegal for someone to employ a person to perform hazardous cleaning.
Bezwada Wilson, activist and national convenor of the Safai Karmachari Andolan that advocates for ending manual scavenging, rubbished claims that these are 'just stormwater drains'.
He said that while officials may claim that the drains contain just silt, if one 'take[s] a look at its colour, it's not just silt but also sewage. It's black in colour. Everybody knows what it is…'
Wilson asked, 'Why are people dying?', alleging that deaths from manual scavenging occur in many places within Delhi.
The PWD's photos have also invited sharp criticism from opposition figures.
'These horrifying images,' wrote Rashtriya Janata Dal MP Manoj Jha, 'fail to prick the conscience of the people basking in the glory of 'double/triple engine' government.'
Former Aam Aadmi Party MLA Saurabh Bharadwaj accused the 'BJP government' of having a history of exploiting Dalit and poor people. 'Legal action should be taken against them,' he wrote on X.
PTI reported that the PWD sacked a junior engineer because the workers in its photos had worked without safety equipment.
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