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Dalit Bahujan Adivasi Labour

Stop Killing Us: Sanitation workers

Despite a widespread response, coverage of the campaign by mainstream and alternative media has been low

Stop killing usImage: Twitter / Bezwada Wilson
 

‘Stop Killing us,’ these words are making the rounds on social media and India alike. The slogan is in response to a call by anti-manual scavenging movement Safai Karamchari Andolan (SKA) for a 75-day campaign decrying the deaths of sanitation workers in sewers and septic tanks.

Launched at Karol Bagh, Delhi, the ‘Stop Killing Us’ campaign calls for protests across India where workers will demand due recognition and compensation for deaths in sewers, septic tanks. Focused in the national capital until May 18 and then branched out to different cities.

In recent days, the campaign reached, Uttarakhand’s Dehradun, Rajasthan’s Sikar, Haryana’s Sadhaura. In all these places, sanitation workers gathered and held up huge block letters making up the phrase “STOP KILLING US.” Many other regions also reported such protests.

 

 

SKA Founder Bezwada Wilson who gave this call had tweeted at the beginning of the campaign how 14 workers had died inside sewers between March 27 and March 30 in four states. However, he accused all government of a “criminal silence” in this regard. Later, Times of India reported how 57 people had died in such circumstances since Independence Day in 2021.

While mainstream media has covered this news, the coverage has not reached the level that the movement has spread to. For example, the Times of India on May 13 reported a local protest in Delhi.

In 2018, the SKA had organised an event of the same name in Jantar Mantar to decry the government’s inaction despite hundreds of manual scavenging-related deaths in the country. This apathy of the government was also apparent during recent legislative meetings when Social Justice Minister Ramdas Athawale claimed that there were zero deaths due to manual scavenging in the last five years. Later, he conceded to 325 deaths in accidents while undertaking hazardous cleaning.

Related:

Manual scavengers: Abandoned by state, derided by society

Manual scavenger deaths: Did Centre misrepresent death data in Parliament?

Gujarat: 12 sanitation workers dead, but no compensation?

No death due to manual scavenging: Social Justice Minister Athawale

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