Manual scavenging trolls: BMC clarifies

A day after the photo of a BMC labourer unclogging a sewage drain without any protective gear or gloves at 90 Feet Road in Sakinaka went viral on social media, BMC officials from Lward (Kurla, Sakinaka) clarified that it wasn’t manual scavenging. The officials claimed that it was a storm water drain and not sewerage. The officials, however, agreed that it was indeed wrong for the man to clean the drain without safety gear.

A storm water drain sub-engineer from Lward said, “The man was just clearing the silt and floating material that had clogged the drain. Hence it is not manual scavenging. However, we found the worker was doing the unclogging without wearing gloves, which is unacceptable.” He said the BMC reprimanded the worker, who said he forgot to wear the gloves in a hurry. “We do not want this to be repeated; we have warned all our staff to do the work with proper safety gear,” the sub-engineer said.

The matter came to light with a complaint posted on Twitter by one Ajay Rajak on Thursday morning that sewage water was overflowing on the streets at 90 Feet Road in Sakinaka. In the afternoon, the official Twitter handle of LWard tweeted to inform that the complaint had been looked into. However, the photo that was uploaded with the tweet showed a man cleaning/unclogging the drain with bare hands.

This led to criticism from all corners, alleging manual scavenging despite a Bombay High Court in September this year. The sub-engineer added, “Posting the photo on twitter while the work was being done, instead of a cleared drain as a reply to the complaint, too, was wrong. It led to confusion and misunderstanding. And a wrong message that this was manual scavenging spread across social media. We will rectify this in the future.”