Municipal commissioner Jairaj Phatak told the Bombay High Court that the high mortality-rate among safai karmacharis was due to poor literacy and unhygienic conditions.
BMC's safai karmacharis share their woes and the occupational hazards they face every day “Just because we handle garbage, don’t we have the right to be treated as humans by the BMC?” says Vijay Hatey, 45, BMC’s safai karmachari living in a transit camp near JJ Hospital. His day begins at 6.30am when a van comes to pick him and six others to collect garbage from Mohammed Ali Road.
Hatey says, “The gloves we get don’t even last a day. They give us thick cloth masks that suffocate us. The baskets provided have holes and we end up dropping garbage on the road. Locals hurl abuses at us for dropping litter in such a manner.”
Municipal commissioner Jairaj Phatak on Thursday told the Bombay High Court that the high mortality-rate among safai karmacharis was due to poor literacy and unhygienic conditions. However, the safai karmacharis have a different tale to tell.
Hatey comes home after a gruelling two-and-a-half-hours of morning duty. “We smell and are exposed to germs, which makes us prone to diseases like TB and malaria. We do not even hug our children till we have a bath. We clean the dirt of the world, but our toilets are the dirtiest. There’s no water sometimes to bathe or even drink.”
Living next to the B-ward office hasn’t helped the safai karmacharis either. “We have been working for more than 25 years. Despite complaints, the ward office has not fulfilled our basic needs of water and fumigation,” he said.
Prakash Revaskar, 45, does night shifts from 10pm to 3.30am, braving the winters outside the B-ward office. “So many years of service in the BMC and we are made to sleep outside the B-ward compound,” said Revaskar.
The camp and many such BMC chawls in the vicinity are breeding grounds for diseases. The safai karmacharis visit Kasturba Hospital at least four times a year.
Said Balakrishna Kamble, 45, a TB patient, “If I don’t report to work, I get pulled up by my supervisor.”
The workers are disillusioned with the Municipal Mazdoor Unions. “Union leaders have an ulterior motive and just talk big. If we were slum dwellers and not BMC employees, at least our basic needs would be met by politicians in need of votes,” said Hatey.
Would they let their children pursue this work? Hatey says, “We’ve done enough jana seva. We will keep our children away from the filth and hope to give them a better life.”
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