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WORKERS in the world’s “most dangerous job” battle snakes in poo-filled tunnels and only get paid £3 a day.
Manual scavenging is a grim job where sanitation workers from India’s poorest backgrounds are hired to clean human waste out of sewers.
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YouTubeThose desperate enough to take on the job become alcoholics and have a life expectancy of just 40 years old.
Manual scavenging exists in parts of India without modern sewers and sees sanitation workers pick up poo with the most basic tools like buckets and wheelbarrows.
Men face the deadly “death pits” where they go neck deep in sewage to clean tunnels and septic tanks.
Women clean poo out of the dry latrines carrying it over their heads in a basket before disposing it in a field.
Many start the job aged just 15 to support their parents, who may also be scavengers.
But the low paying job destines them to live a life of poverty outside of the law and socially tainted.
The workers aren’t given any protective gear, like goggles, to work in the sewers and even use their normal shoes.
Many of the workers turn to alcohol to confront the awful stench and enter the death pits drunk.
The job has a depressing fatality rate – 600 of the workers die from lung cancer, alcoholism, tetanus, and Carbon monoxide poisoning each year.
Some even die inside the tanks they are sent in to clean.
Many of the sanitation workers don’t even work in proper sewers, instead cleaning up the rail network.
India’s railways, which employs over 1m people, are the largest open sewer in the world and its operator employs thousands of manual scavengers itself.
But times are changing, with India’s governments now turning to robots to clean sewers instead.
The Bandicoot robot is able to clear blockages inside manholes, preventing a man from having to go down into the sewer.
Scavenger rights
The job is illegal, but laws prohibiting it are not enforced and tens of thousands still work in the job.
Dr Vimal Kumar founded the charity Movement for Scavenger Community (MSC) to stand up for the rights of those doing the horrific job.
His charity provides community spaces for those in the community to learn in and leadership training to try and help communities pull themselves out.
Dalits, those in India’s lowest caste, can’t afford healthcare and are often hired on temporary contracts.
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kerala.govDoing the job has created a stigma for the Dalit class in India.
The “untouchables”, as the are known, are seen by other classes as “illiterate, lazy and workshy”, Dr Vimal said.
He said: “Society thinks we’re born to clean other people’s s***. We are discriminated against in every aspect of our lives.
“Society doesn’t accept us as shopkeepers or vegetable sellers because of our perceived filth. In Hindi we are called ‘rats’.”
Rags to riches
Dr Vimal’s mother, who funded his schooling in exchange for cleaning their toilets, recently died from lung cancer.
“My mother had a second job working as a sweeper in a rich family’s home.
“She used to go and clean their toilets and collected their kids’ old books for me as we couldn’t afford to buy them.
“She died on August 19. Lung cancer got her. The lungs were infected due to dust she encountered in her job.”
Dr Vimal faced brutal bullying at school because of the job his mother was doing.
He said: “I remember kids at school bullied me, saying my mother was cleaning their s*** and it really upset me.
“I even had a teacher address me as ‘sweeper’s son’ rather than my name.”
When Vimal finished high school, completed his undergrad and postgrad and later went on to get a PhD in the USA.
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English (US)