Orissa HC prods govt to end scavenging

CUTTACK: The Orissa high court has issued fresh direction to the state government to file an affidavit listing out the steps it has taken so far to implement, in letter and spirit, the various provisions of The Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013.
A two-judge bench of Chief Justice S Muralidhar and Justice A K Mohapatra gave the directive on Saturday after amicus curiae Bibhu Prasad Tripathy pointed out that the one issued on April 19 had not been complied till date by the state government.
The HC was hearing a PIL it had registered suo motu on April 19 in connection with the two recent deaths of sanitation workers in Cuttack and Bhubaneswar.
The bench directed the state government to file the affidavit at least one week before the next date of hearing on January 10, 2022.
The court expected the state government to give in the affidavit details of the compensation paid in respect of each such death, whether the identified manual scavenger and/or sewer/septic tank cleaner has been rehabilitated and whether the parties who violated the law have been prosecuted and punished according to law.
While registering the PIL, the HC had expressed shock that the shameful practice of making underprivileged and poor persons undertake hazardous manual cleaning of sewers and septic tanks continues unabated in India despite enactment of the law eight years ago.
Parliament had enacted the new legislation, which became operative on October 1, 2013, after finding that the existing law - The Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act, 1993 - was not stringent enough to eliminate the social evil.