Nagaland remembers workers on the fringes of its local economy
In probably for the first time for the state of Nagaland, the administration has assured to conduct a survey about the population of manual scavengers in the state and their “wellbeing.”
Innumerable announcements and inaugurations highlighting equally numerous welfare schemes are a common feature of news publishing in this small Northeast region state, where press releases in effect dogfight for newspaper space.
But this first nod for the ‘Safai Karamcharis’—Hindi for manual scavengers—as assured by the state’s principal administrator, Chief Secretary Temjen Toy, to a visiting team of a central welfare commission from Delhi, was real news.
The chief secretary told media persons during a press conference on February 18 in Kohima about conducting a survey on the number of sanitation workers in Nagaland, ‘not only for reporting but for their uplift and wellbeing.’
The state’s administration hosted Manhar Valjibhai Zala, the chairman of the National Commission for Safai Karamcharis, of the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, and two of his officials at the Secretariat in capital town Kohima.
A Safai Karamchari is a person who engages in, or is employed for sanitation work. Their work is long and tedious, and hazardous. Basically, they do work not anyone would. Manual scavenging is a term used to describe manual removal of untreated human excreta. The practice is prohibited by law.
