They pay with their health to keep our city clean

CHENNAI: A 35-year-old sanitary worker has to travel 30 minutes to use a toilet at the zonal office when she’s working. Reason: The public toilets in Kolathur, where she collects garbage and cleans the road, are either locked all the time or not maintained properly.

Sanitary workers of solid waste management are not provided basic facilities like face masks, hand gloves or even a room to change their clothes before leaving for work. Neither are they provided a regular health check-up, as they’re suffer from many health issues.

“There are no toilets nearby. Even the public toilet is not maintained properly and in some areas, it remains locked. We’re forced to request residents in the locality, but they do not let us into their homes. So, we travel to the zonal office to use the toilet. During periods, the situation is even worse, we’ve have raised this issue to the higher officials but nothing has been done so far,” she averred.

Sanitary workers suffer from various health issues including breathing difficulty and cough, as they’re not provided with gloves and masks for collecting garbage and sweeping the road. Workers claim that whenever there were inspections, or events in the area, the local body distributes masks, hand gloves, and coats.

“There are carcasses of dogs and cats on the road. We’re forced to carry them with our bare hands. Officials don’t care if we get infected. People are afraid they’ll get infected with disease, but we’re cleaning their garbage and keeping the roads clean,” said a conservancy worker in Tondiarpet (Zone 4). “The government does not provide us with basic facilities. We buy masks and gloves with our meagre salary, which is not enough to run the family. How can we afford to purchase them regularly?”

The GCC had initiated health camps for sanitation workers but it wasn’t organised regularly. Only during the pandemic, they were given vaccination shots but workers with co-morbidities did not receive any medication or assistance.

Another worker stated that when the local body authorities initiated health camps for the solid waste management workers, it was conducted only once where they provided medicines for blood pressure, diabetes and viral fever. “But it’s not conducted regularly. We’re forced to spend time and money at private hospitals, as the GHs are quite far from our place, and the UPHC functions at a particular time. If a health camp is organised every 6 months, it’d help us a lot,” he added.

Another challenge is lack of manpower at the GCC, which denies conservancy workers their leave even during emergencies. A sick leave results in loss of pay; so they work on all days without extra pay even when they’re ill.

“Already we’re being paid very less, and the hike is only around Rs 14-16 every year. If we take leave, our salary would be cut, which would make it difficult to manage the monthly budget. Nobody highlights the problem we face daily,” said a worker at Velachery.

When contacted, a senior official at the Corporation stated that health camps have been conducted every 3 months across the city. “We’ve instructed the concerned zonal supervisors and contractors to provide face masks and hand gloves to sanitary workers. If not, action would be taken against them,” said the officer.