Despite ban, men clean sewers in Mogappair

CHENNAI: Vellaichamy crushes a lemon and sprinkles the juice on three others, including his 10-year-old son in shabby school uniform, to ward off evil. He then has a quick swig of brandy, puffs on a cigarette, and disappears down a rope into the darkness. Moments later, a bucketful of stinking sludge comes up that the boy covers with sand once it is emptied into nearby bushes.
Vellaichamy and his men have been hired by a private contractor to clean sewers at an apartment complex in Mogappair where they work away from the public gaze, and despite a ban.
Machinery to clean sewers includes a dewatering pump to suck water, a jet-rodding machine that propels water at full force to break down hardened silt, and a super sucker to collect waste that is later discarded at a landfill. The corporation, said a senior engineer of the storm water department, hires the machinery from private firms paying 3,000 per tonne of silt cleared.
“Employing these machines will cost more. We are asked by residents to clean sewers for a lesser quote. Manual scavenging is our only option,” said the contractor overseeing Vellaichamy and his men, adding that most residential complexes hire such men. “There are many apartment complexes in Avadi and on ECR where men clean sewers,” he said.
Contractors scout for workers randomly. “We don’t have permanent staff but have touts who broker the deal,” the contractor said. The ‘deal’ is around 1,000 a day, a pint of liquor and a packet of cigarettes. Workers are not provided any safety gear save a pinch of camphor which, if it keeps burning inside the sewer, tells the worker there is enough oxygen to breathe.
Last June, the Madras high court, citing 150 people had died since 1993 while cleaning sewers, said it would monitor implementation of manual scavenging laws in the state. While the corporation hiring manual scavengers comes under fire from activists, the menace continues in walled compounds, especially in the suburbs, said Change India director A Narayanan who has been fighting to get the practice abolished. “There is no underground sewage system in many places and tanks are so ill-designed that they cannot be cleaned with machines.”
Even in places where tanks can be cleaned with machines, resident associations, to cut costs, prefer to put a man’s life in danger. Vellaichamy, fortified by the liquor and 1,000, remain unfrazzled. The money, he says, will allow his son a decent education. “I don’t let him clean the sewers. He will be an engineer,” he said before plunging into the darkness again.