The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court on Friday sought a response from the State in a public interest litigation petition seeking rehabilitation of manual scavengers as per the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013.
A Division Bench of Justices T. S. Sivagnanam and S. Ananthi took a serious view of the issue and sought a response from authorities in the PIL petition filed in 2017 by advocate Sahaya Philomin Raj of Madurai. The case was adjourned till July 7.
The petitioner said that he was engaged in bringing awareness to manual scavengers in Madurai and Virudhunagar districts. He said that he had identified 132 manual scavengers in Madurai and 164 manual scavengers in Virudhunagar.
The Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act was enacted to prohibit manual scavenging and to rehabilitate the identified manual scavengers and their families, the petitioner said.
He pointed out that the workers were unaware of the Act and the rehabilitation measures enumerated in the Act. Moreover, the authorities were not taking steps to identify the manual scavengers for the purpose of rehabilitation.
The petitioner said that the authorities must identify the workers as manual scavengers in order to provide them identity cards so that they could avail the rehabilitation measures as per the Act. A survey committee should be established to identify the workers, he said.
The committee should arrange for creating awareness among the manual scavengers and government officials who were supposed to implement the provisions under the Act, he said.
