The division bench of acting Chief Justice AJ Desai and Justice Biren Vaishnav of the Gujarat High Court, recently held that local body chiefs will be held liable for action if any local governing body is found to be availing services of people for cleaning manholes. The bench also directed the state government to pay all compensations before the next date of hearing on June 19.
“If any of the workers whose services have been availed either by any of the municipal corporations, municipalities or any gram panchayats for cleaning sewage in the concerned area, the municipal commissioner of that corporation, chief officer of the concerned municipality and sarpanch of concerned gram panchayat shall be held liable for the action since by way of a government resolution of 2014 such activity has been banned,” the court stated.
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The bench was hearing a plea seeking criminal action against nodal officers responsible for the death of manhole scavengers in the state.
Meanwhile, the state government submitted before the Court that the state has disbursed ex gratia compensation to the legal heirs of 137 of the 152 deceased who died while cleaning sewage lines.
The counsel for the state Assistant Government Pleader Utkarsh Sharma informed the court that the authorities or local bodies do not employ manual scavengers and use machines to clean sewage lines. Such deaths are caused at the behest of private contractors, he stated.
“What happens is, in a small town or village, they independently contact those workers and labourers, pay them and they will enter. They will not contact us (authorities) because once they approach us, we will not permit them. We have machines… All cleaning happens with those machines… 99 per cent of these instances are private in nature,” Sharma submitted. However, ACJ Desai termed these as mere “excuses”.
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