As an effort to eliminate the age old and heinous practice of manual scavenging, the State Government has decided to undertake identification of manual scavengers from July 27 for their rehabilitation. The information would be sent to the Union Social Justice and Empowerment Ministry towards August end next for final publication by November end.
Addressing a Press conference here on Friday, Safai Karmachari Andolan national convenor Bezwada Wilson said that the State Government with the support of the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment would conduct a survey of manual scavengers covering all the 107 statutory towns. The Safai Karmachari Andolan, a national level organisation working in the field of elimination, identification and rehabilitation of manual scavengers would help the State in sensitisation programme, he said.
He appealed the NGOs, community-based organisations and citizens to provide information about manual scavengers if any in their respective localities.
Wilson said self-declaration centres would be opened in all urban local bodies to capture information about manual scavengers. In all the urban areas, enumeration for a fortnight would be conducted from August 8 to 22, he said.
From August 23 to 31, enumerators would visit the households of manual scavengers and collect the detailed information about them and their family members in a prescribed format, he said.
The enumeration of manual scavengers is necessitated as the Census -2011 had no definite data and the ongoing Socio-economic and Caste Census, 2011-12 has no column to capture information regarding manual scavengers in urban areas, he said.
However, according to 2011 census, there were 81,285 scavengers in sanitary latrines including 27,219 in urban areas in the State, he said, adding that prevalence of insanitary latrines in statutory towns of the State suggested the chances of manual scavengers in the towns.