New Delhi: Despite the efforts to end one of the inhuman works in world, the manual scavenging, a latest survey revealed that there are 53,236 manual scavengers across 12 states in India. More shockingly, it is a fourfold rise from the 13,639 such workers from the last year, the Indian Express reported. According to the survey, about 916 people are engaged in the inhumane work in Kerala, despite the number of 600 reported by the state.
The data is compiled based on the information collected from only 121 districts of the 12 states -Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Gujarat, Haryana, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, surveyed by the National Safai Karmacharis Finance and Development Corporation (NSKFDC).
This phase of the survey is yet to be conducted in Bihar, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Telengana and West Bengal. Meanwhile, several news media pointed out the flaws in the way the survey is being conducted. Moreover, the survey only includes those manual scavengers who clean dry latrines and pit latrines, while those involved in the cleaning of sewers and septic tanks and scavengers in the railways (largest employer of manual scavengers) are not counted.
