Manual scavenging has been banned in India since 1993 and is currently prohibited under the ‘The Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013’ (the ‘Act’). The Act mandates the provision of safety equipment and gear for workers engaged in hazardous cleaning, and also a shift towards mechanization of cleaning septic tanks, sewers, and other spaces. This blog post delves into the lack of provision of safety equipment and traces the progress of complete mechanization while focusing on certain schemes of the Government, to enable the eradication of manual scavenging.
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