Dear Editor,
I am addressing you on the Matter of sewage cleaners, or manual scavenging, which as you know, is the cleaning of human waste by communities considered "low caste", which unfortunately, I happen to fall under. I have never been to school, but I want my kids to be educated. Therefore, I have to do various small jobs and this happens to be one of them. In fact, the only way that I am able to send you this letter is because of my dear family friend, who has kindly agreed to write down my opinion, in which I would like to share with you. Don't get me wrong, I am very grateful to have this job. This job supplies my family and I with food, shelter, and education, as well as this job benefits my community, in which I am entitled to serve. However, I don't believe you have heard all of the negative aspects of the sewer cleaning business and I believe you deserve to know what horrors it actually consists of.
On a daily basis, I wake up at 6 a.m. and eat whatever is leftover from the day before, while making sure to leave enough for my wife and children. After this, I journey to any manhole or sewer that the city assigns me to, and crawl through tight spaces for multiple hours until I am allowed to return home. Every day, me and the people of my caste crawl around sewers without any protective gear. Filth and human excrement are a given, but sometimes we come across a dead dog or a dead rat as well. Broken bottles lurk in the pitch-black sewer system too which cover our legs with scars and cuts. Hundreds die each year because of this, when people hear this, many say they do it because they have no alternative. Even though we suffer from health problems and hear stories of workers dying in manholes, we cannot do anything other than carry on with our work. We have no choice. There are very minimal safety regulations with this work. About the only thing I've ever seen supplied to people of my caste is a harness, and thats only for manholes that are deeper than 20 feet. It is said that medical help is available to people at every site, but I have been doing this since I was a kid, and I've never seen any safety precautions other than a harness, not even a first aid kit.
As a result of these poor conditions, the statistics of deaths and injuries for low-caste people are continuously rising. On average, 20 sewer workers die each month from accidents, suffocation or exposure to toxic gas. Out of the workers that remain alive, 80% die before they reach 60 years old due to work related health problems, and 95% of the people in the sewage cleaning caste are Dalits. I am about one week shy of turning 55, and since I have been working in the sewers since childhood, Im surprised I've lived this long. After hearing all of this evidence, i hope you consider taking my story to an official of higher power in order to remove the caste from society for once and for all. On top of all the health issues, this job is humiliating. How would you feel about yourself if you had to support your family by cleaning sewers with garbage and human excrement? How would you feel about not even being able to go into a store without people discriminating against you because of your caste, or trying to pity you because you have a terrible life. On top of all of this, what about human rights? Its not natural to treat beings of the same species this way, even the slaves of ancient Egypt got better treatment than me and my fellow kind. I hope you take this into serious consideration and do what you think is right for society. Thank you for your time sir.
Sincerely,
Amir Gupta
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