The Secretary of the Municipal Administration and Water Supply (MAWS) department and the head of Metrowater appeared before the High Court on Monday in connection with a contempt application against them in a matter relating to manual scavenging.
On November 24, the First Bench comprising Chief Justice M.Y.Eqbal and Justice T.S.Sivagnanam had directed the two officials to appear before the court in a contempt petition filed by A.Narayanan. He had earlier filed a writ petition against manual scavenging and the court passed an order on it.
After perusing the additional affidavit filed by Mr.Narayanan, the Bench said prima facie the authorities were bent upon violating the court directions.
A couple of persons died while cleaning underground sewer lines.
The matter was posted for Monday.
Accordingly, MAWS Secretary Ashok Vardhan Shetty and Managing Director of Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board Rajesh Lakhoni were present in the court and filed counter affidavits.
In the affidavit, Mr.Shetty said the government had undertaken concerted efforts for the effective implementation of the court order dated November 20, 2008, banning entry of sanitary workers into underground sewerage. In spite of the best efforts, there were stray incidents where innocent lives had been lost due to the carelessness of contractors.
A G.O. was issued on November 26 this year reiterating the government's seriousness to prevent entry of sanitary workers into sewer lines. The order's intention was to take stringent action against the erring government servants/contractors, and recasting/improving the contractor liability clauses.
Mr. Lakhoni submitted that after the High Court order, extensive measures to mechanise the operation and maintenance of Chennai City sewerage network were undertaken.
Metrowater had shown ‘zero tolerance' to any violations of the ban that had come to its notice.
The matter has been posted for further hearing after four weeks.
