No data, no compensation: Injured sewer workers slip through legislative & legal cracks

New Delhi: On a cold February morning in 2020, Sanjay, a sanitation worker, in his forties, from Delhi’s Seemapuri, was called in a hurry by a local contractor. A political rally was scheduled nearby, and “the sewer was overflowing”.

He was promised Rs 300. “It was urgent and the money was good, so we went,” Sanjay said.

Three men climbed down that day, but only one made it out alive.

Inside the narrow pit, thick with the stench of toxic gases, Sanjay’s co-workers fell unconscious within minutes. “Then they pushed me to go inside and check,” Sanjay said.

He remembers nothing after that but only waking up, 13 days later, in a hospital bed with tubes running through his nose and throat.

Sanjay’s medical records from the Lok Nayak Hospital mention “acute sewer gas poisoning” and “pneumonitis” – lung inflammation caused by inhaling toxic gases such as hydrogen sulfide and methane.

He suffered seizures, needed mechanical ventilation, and narrowly survived. And the scars of that day remain etched in his body and mind.

“My stomach hurts all the time, my breathing is heavy, my heart races,” he said, pointing to a small plastic bag of pills he can no longer afford.

“I drink alcohol now to fight the pain. It’s cheaper than medicine.”

Sanjay’s mother, now 70, spends her days stitching elastic onto garment tags, earning Rs 30 a day. Their small, single-room house is crumbling; walls are cracked and damp, and the ceiling sagging dangerously.

“We haven’t repaired anything since his accident. Whatever little we have goes into rent and food,” she said.

Despite nearly losing his life inside a sewer, Sanjay never received compensation. There was no inquiry, no official acknowledgment, no rehabilitation.

And, Sanjay’s story is not an exception -- it is a pattern.

This year on March 28, the Supreme Court directed every metropolitan city to pay Rs 30 lakh compensation to the kin of those who die due to manual scavenging within four weeks.

But when it comes to injuries, the law turns vague, advocate Areeb Uddin Ahmed, who has worked on multiple sanitation workers’ cases, said.

There is no fixed compensation formula for people like Sanjay, neither are any official data maintained.

An RTI response received by news agency from the National Commission of Safai Karamcharis clearly states, “According to the record available with the Commission, no information related to people injured while cleaning sewer and septic tanks and the compensation provided to them (from 2014-15 to 2024-25) were reported to the Commission”.

Each case is treated “on a case-to-case basis”, often meaning no action at all, especially for sanitation workers like Sanjay, who can barely afford two meals a day, let alone pursue a lawsuit.

“While deaths are counted and duly compensated, the injured are forgotten. Many workers who survive toxic exposure live with chronic lung damage, kidney failure or neurological problems, but they are invisible to the state,” said activist Ashok Kumar Taank, joint secretary of the Dalit Adivasi Shakti Adhikar Manch, an organisation working for sanitation workers’ rights. with agency inputs