Representative image. Credit: PTI
New Delhi: Three sanitation workers were killed and another was injured in Gurugram’s Khandsa on Saturday (September 30 ) after they inhaled poisonous gases while cleaning a sewer, Outlook reported.
The deaths are the latest in a series of similar incidents reflecting the unsafe conditions sanitation worker in the country are made to work in.
According to Indian Express, earlier this month, three workers had died while they were ‘inspecting’ a sewer blockage in Noida’s Sector 110.
On August 20, a sanitation worker had died while two others took ill after they inhaled poisonous gas while cleaning a sewer at a city government-run hospital in central Delhi.
On August 12, two brothers had died of suffocation while cleaning a septic pit at a shopping mall in East Delhi’s Anand Vihar, and just six days before that, three had died after inhaling toxic gases while they were cleaning a sewer in Lajpat Nagar. Four others died on July 15 after they entered a water harvesting tank in Ghitorni.
Even though manual scavenging was banned in 1993, over 80 people have died in the drains and manholes of Delhi alone since 1994.
The Delhi Jal Board, according to the Indian Express report, has approved setting up of 93 decentralised sewage treatment plants and Rs 10 lakh compensation to kin of victims of sewer deaths since 1993.
(With agency inputs)
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