The Aam Aadmi Party said in Mysuru on Tuesday that the death of a pourakarmika due to asphyxiation after he entered a manhole to clean the UGD is not just unfortunate but unforgiveable. Itargued that the death would not have occurred if the government had strictly implemented the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation (PEMSR) Act, 2013.
In a statement here, AAP Mysuru president Malavika Gubbivani said the decision to send the pourakarmika into the manhole is unfortunate and the town municipal council and/or the government must rehabilitate the aggrieved family by providing them a government job. Strict action must also be taken against the person who made him enter the manhole, she demanded.
“Such incidents are happening regularly and those violating the Act are never being punished. The government has totally failed in implementing this Act. Another reason for recurrence of such incidents is that the local bodies have failed to procure enough sucking machines for cleaning the manholes,” the statement said.
She said the Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP Government in Delhi has taken the issue seriously and has totally banned manual scavenging. “It has become the first State in the country to do so. In the last three years it has procured more than 200 cleaning machines and pressed them into service,” she claimed.
The AAP Government has given complete control of these machines to families of pourakarmikas under the rehabilitation scheme by taking just 10% of the machine cost from them and treating the rest as bank loan repayable in three years. Such a system should be adopted in Karnataka too, she demanded.
