Tuesday’s incident wherein two daily wage labourers met their horrible end in a sewerage line throws focus on how despite the much vaunted technological advancement in maintenance of sewer lines, use of manual labour remains the norm.
If not for the twin deaths, the brazen violation of human dignity would have gone unnoticed, as is the case in all such instances where labourers are engaged to enter sewage manholes.
The body of the second worker, Anthaiah, is yet to be fished out, and authorities have given up their search in the sewerage pipeline. When the news last came in, the search had shifted to a lake 15 km away in Pasumamula village, where the body is hoped to have arrived along with the sewage flow.
The two workers were summoned to the location close to the midnight on Tuesday, for fixing the rope of bucket cleaning machine inside the pipeline through manhole. They died one after the other when they entered the manhole.
“Usually the work is in daytime, but he went in the night, for the greed of mere ₹100 more. Instead of ₹600, he was promised ₹700,” Gowri, wife of one of the workers, told the media.
In order to clear chokages in sewer lines, mini jetting machines are deployed, which pump high pressure air into the pipeline. However, in the present instance at Padmavathi Colony, the issue was not chokage, but silt deposited inside the pipeline to clear which bucket cleaning machines are ideal, say officials from GHMC.
“The machines require fixing of rope inside the manhole with a bucket tied on the other end. The rope along with the bucket travels to the next manhole where it is pulled up,” an official informed, while asserting that GHMC had not given permission to the contractor to work in the night, nor engage manual labour.
There has not been any promise of compensation for the workers from either the State government or GHMC till news last came in. No statement has been issued nor any visit was paid by Mayor Gadwal Vijayalakshmi or GHMC Commissioner D.S. Lokesh Kumar to the location so far, which explains the denial mode of GHMC.
