Antiquated Cleaning Method Kills Hundreds

Living in a modern country isolates Americans from the horrors people in third world countries face just to earn a living. Perhaps the strongest example of this is the sewer and latrine cleaning industry in India.

Unlike developed countries which use modern machinery to pump out sewers, India still sends workers down into the sewers, often without any personal protection equipment (PPE), to manually clean blocked sewer lines using brooms, scrapers, and buckets to clean blockages. They often go down into the sewer in just their underwear, without a gas mask, putting them as risk of death from asphyxiation.

Although manual sewer cleaning was outlawed in 1993 in India, it is still commonly practiced. Almost 300 people (288) have died in the country while cleaning sewers or septic tanks during the last three years, according to the Social Justice and Empowerment Ministry, The Hindu Business-Line reports.

The ministry conducted a national survey of manual sewer cleaners from 2018 to 2019 in 18 Indian states and identified 51,835 such workers.