Manual scavenging | HC pulls up Gujarat govt. over non-payment of compensation to 16 dead workers’ kin

The court was hearing a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by Ahmedabad-based NGO Manav Garima, seeking the implementation of the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013.

The Gujarat High Court on Wednesday pulled up the State government over the non-payment of compensation to the kin of 16 sanitation workers who died during manual scavenging between 1993 and 2014 and directed it to explain the reason in an affidavit.

The court of Chief Justice Sunita Agarwal and Justice Aniruddha P. Mayee also wanted to know from the State what steps it has taken to adopt the 2013 anti-manual scavenging law, and whether the government was in a position to do away with the practice or still taking the help of sanitation workers for it.

The court was hearing a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by Ahmedabad-based NGO Manav Garima, seeking the implementation of the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013.

When the petitioner’s lawyer informed the court that the family members of 16 deceased manual scavengers were yet to be paid the compensation as per the Supreme Court guidelines, the court pulled up the government and said the latter could not go on making payments to some and leaving out the others.

It directed the principal secretary of the urban development and urban housing department to file his personal affidavit to bring on record the reasons for non-payment of compensation to the families of the 16 workers whose names were included in the list of deceased submitted by the petitioner.

The court also took note of another recent incident of manual scavenging in Bhavnagar city where a sanitation worker of the civic body died of asphyxiation while another suffered serious injuries after entering a sewage tank on the campus of the Central Salt and Marine Chemicals Research Institute (CSMCRI) on November 10, 2023.

It permitted the petitioner to implead the civic body as a respondent with a direction for it to file an affidavit to bring on record details concerning the incident. The court also directed the principal secretary to submit a report regarding the same.