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Hundreds protest in New Delhi against sewer cleaner deaths
26th of September 2018
The relatives of thousands of Indians who have died cleaning sewers protested in New Delhi yesterday reports Reuters, aiming to stop the practice of workers entering underground conduits to unclog drains and remove waste with their bare hands.
Hundreds of protesters shouted slogans accusing the government of delaying compensation for sewer deaths.
About 1,800 sewers cleaners have asphyxiated to death in the last decade, says the Safai Karamchari Andolan (SKA), a group that is campaigning to eliminate the practice.
Most of the approximately 160,000 workers involved in cleaning human waste are women, it added.
In 1993 India outlawed what it calls “manual scavenging”, a practice that includes the barehanded cleaning of dry latrines, mostly by women and Dalits, who are at the bottom of Hinduism’s social hierarchy. Some members of India’s lower castes, however, still engage in unsafe cleaning practices.
RSS