The sewers at STPs in Srinagar are cleaned manually without any protective gear, putting the life of these wage labourers, who are paid a pittance, at risk. Aliya Bashir reports.

A lot of garbage littered the place. Dogs were running all over it in search of food. The place was badly stinking. Four men were looking down a manhole while one of their colleagues was collecting garbage that had blocked the sewers, with bare hands.

Nazir Ahmed Bhat had gone down the 25-feet deep dark manhole to remove the solid garbage that was choking the sewers at the Brari Nambal Sewage Treatment Plant (STP), near Baba Dawoodi Khaki Bridge. He doesn’t have any special gear or even a mask to keep the poisonous gases from harming him. Just a pair of used surgical gloves, which at the most can give him a sense of hygiene. 

Human waste and garbage produce methane and other toxic gases during the process of decomposition.
“It is dark down there, full of filth and stinky,” says Nazir, 33, a resident of Hawal, Srinagar after coming out of the manhole.

With a gunny sack tied to a long wooden stick, he pulled out some garbage from the manhole.

His colleague Ghulam Qadir Chowpan, 35, who is daily wage labourer says, “It is terrible when we have to remove broken glass and syringes with bare hands from the sewers.”

Gulzar Ahmed Shiekh, 28, a resident of Tral, has been working as the sewer cleaner at the STP for eight years. He says his family is not aware about the nature of his job. “All they know is that I work as a daily wager at some STP,” Gulzar said.

The work of cleaning garbage carries social stigma in the sub-continental societies. The garbage removal in India is done by the people, lowest on the rigid caste-ladder. So the men cleaning sewers at the STPs mostly keep the nature of their work secret from their families and parents.

Gulzar fears social discrimination if people come to know about the nature of his work.

“I don’t want to be one among them. I feel scared that who will marry my two sisters if people come to know about my work,” he says.

Just after completing his secondary school, Gulzar came to Srinagar looking for a job. He could only find one that of sewer cleaning.

“When I had no job, I thought to work for sometime till I find some other job,” says Gulzar.

The sewers are mostly choked by non-biodegradable waste. Polythene bags, syringes, medical waste, animals carcases, liquor and plastic bottles, wire meshes, glass, burnt tyres and other garbage, which should have been disposed off in a different manner, finds its way into the city sewage system. 

In the absence of any mechanised sewer cleaning system, these people have to go down the deep drains and remove the solid waste with their hands.

Almost all the sewer cleaners are unorganised daily wage labourers, who are not covered by any labour laws or rights enjoyed by regular government employees.

“No efforts are being made to ensure our safety. To clean these sewers, no safety devices or life-saving gear are being provided to us,” says Abdul Rashid, 30, another worker at the STP.

There are many more men like Nazir, Gulzar and Rashid who put their lives at risk of contracting diseases and encountering poisonous gases in the sewers, to feed their families.

Ghulam Qadir says that his back was badly injured a few months ago after he fell into the drain. “It took me three weeks to recuperate. I didn’t tell my family the reason behind my fall,” he said.

“My family too doesn’t know about my work. They will never allow me to do such work,” Ghulam Qadir said.

 These STPs in Srinagar city are run by Urban Environmental Engineering Department (UEED).

Assistant Executive Engineer UEED, Mehraj-ud-din Bhat said, “Here we have manual cleaning and not with machines. All machines are lying with city’s municipal corporation.

We only use manual labourers to clean city sewer pipes. All lateral drainage network coming under Srinagar Municipal Corporation, provided by Asian Development Bank,”

Bhat says that the provision of safety for these sewer labourers is not UEED’s duty, as they are outsourced to private contractors.

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