New Delhi: The government has taken two major decisions to stop the death of scavengers while cleaning. The government has said that it will change the law to ban the cleaning of sewer and septic tanks by hand. While the Ministry of Social Justice has said that it will change the existing law to clean sewer and septic tank with the machine. The Ministry of Urban Affairs has embarked on the 'Safai Mitra Security Challenge' campaign so that no one can clean the sewer or tank manually.
The Supreme Court, in many of its decisions, has refused to manually clean sewer and septic tanks, yet the work is going on. Nearly 800 cleaners have died while cleaning sewer and septic tanks in the last five years. On 'World Toilet Day', Union Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Hardeep Singh Puri on Thursday launched the 'Safai Mitra Security Challenge' campaign in 243 cities of the country. The objective of this campaign is to mechanize all sewer and septic tank cleaning operations by 30 April next year.
In a program, the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment Secretary R Subramaniam said that the current law will be changed to make sewer and septic tanks compulsory with cleaning machines. Subramaniam said that the ministry will provide the funds for the purchase of machines, not to corporations and contractors, but to scavengers. He said, 'We want the sweepers to buy these machines so that the corporation can use these machines where needed.'
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