L-G okays proposal to nominate DMs as responsible sanitation authority

New Delhi: Lieutenant Governor V K Saxena has approved the Delhi government’s proposal to nominate district magistrates as the Responsible Sanitation Authority in their jurisdiction and establish Emergency Response Sanitation Units to ensure the elimination of manual cleaning of sewers, officials said on Thursday.

The proposal was submitted to the L-G by the city government after a delay of almost three years, the officials of Raj Niwas added.

“The proposal of the Delhi government’s urban development department was received at the L-G Secretariat in the last week of January. This happened despite the fact that the Centre and the prime minister himself reviewed the progress made on the issue on June 2, 2022 the administrative department of the Delhi government had submitted a status report in this regard,” an official said.

There was no immediate reaction to this from the Delhi government.

To effectively address the menace of manual scavenging and the needs of one of the most marginalised sections of society, a Group of Ministers (GoM) set up by the Centre in its meeting held on February 19, 2020, had decided that DMs in every district should be designated as the RSA. Their role and responsibility was clearly defined as per the provisions of “The Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and Their Rehabilitation (PEMSR) Act, 2013”.

The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs informed through an email in 2022 that the Delhi government was bound by directives of the GOM, the official said.

It was also informed that the Delhi Jal Board (DJB) can provide its dedicated holding of each type of manpower and machinery earmarked or prioritised for working for this purpose in the territorial jurisdiction of each district separately, the official said.

Following the email in May 2022, the urban development department submitted the proposal to the then Deputy CM Manish Sisodia in June of the same year which remained with him till his arrest in February last year, the official said. The file remained pending for more than a year and a request was made to Saurabh Bhardwaj, who now holds the portfolio of urban development, in September last year to expedite the matter.