Hundreds of people stage protest in Delhi against deaths of sewer cleaners

Hundreds of people including students and acitivists gathered in Delhi's Jantar Mantar on Tuesday to protest against the deaths of manual scavengers in sewers across the country.

The protestors raised slogans and waved banners with texts like"stop killing us".

One placard also read, "Eleven workers died in the sewers in seven days. 'Swachh Bharat'for whom?"

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The relatives of thousands of manual scavengers who have died cleaning sewers with their bare hands were also at Jantar Mantar among the protestors.

The news agency Reuters quoted a mother of a manual scavenger saying that "I lost my only son."

"He went into the sewers and never came out. How long will these deaths continue?", She questioned.

Workers picking up human waste with bare hands and broomsticks are a common sight on railway tracks and stations across India and the recent deaths has sparked a wave of protest in the country.

About 1,800 sewers cleaners have asphyxiated to death in the last decade, says the Safai Karamchari Andolan (SKA), a group that is campaigning to eliminate the practice of workers entering underground conduits to unclog drains and remove waste with their bare hands.

Most of the roughly 160,000 workers involved in cleaning human waste are women, it added.

In 1993, India outlawed what it calls "manual scavenging", a practice that includes the barehanded cleaning of dry latrines, mostly by women and lowers castes.

(With inputs from news agencies)