In September last year, Ravi, 32, climbed into a manhole on Jhind road in Haryana’s Rohtak district. Employed by a contractor at the state’s public health engineering department, he was tasked with unblocking a sewer line.

Ravi didn’t want to do it. He had no safety equipment and was dressed only in his underwear.

“But higher officials said the line had to be cleared. They said, ‘We don’t care how you do it, be it from inside or outside. But the blockage should be cleared by the end of the day,’” Ravi told Newslaundry. “And then they left.”

A junior engineer at the spot then pressured him to clear the blockage in the sewer line. “I initially resisted, saying I had no safety equipment to go inside the manhole,” Ravi said. “But he insisted. He said it was not deep. I had no other option but to go inside for the sake of my family.”

He added, “But then, the incident happened.”

Ravi passed out after inhaling toxic gas inside the manhole. He was pulled out by four people nearby and rushed to a hospital. He’s not fully recovered – he can barely see out of one eye.

And yet, Ravi is lucky. Last year, 48 people died across India while cleaning sewers and septic tanks. Thirteen of these deaths were in Haryana, though Newslaundry had reported that this number might be much higher than official records.

And these deaths don’t count as deaths due to manual scavenging, which is officially banned by the Supreme Court. They’re considered deaths due to “accidents while undertaking hazardous cleaning of sewer and septic tanks”, while manual scavenging involves cleaning human excreta from dry latrines.

But dozens of workers in Haryana told Newslaundry that they believe their work constitutes manual scavenging – they climb into manholes and tanks without safety equipment to clean sewage by hand. 

Importantly, the majority of those cleaning sewers in Haryana belong to the Valmiki community, a Dalit sub-caste. “They are financially weak, socially marginalised and literally backwards,” said Suresh Kumar, head of the Sarv Karamchari Sangh in Hisar’s Barwala block. “This is why they are made to clean sewage.”

Suresh added that subsequent generations are also pushed into the same line of work. 

“The work in sewers is such that workers drink a lot to get rid of the smell, to forget everything,” he said. “Then there are health complications as well. In the end, there is no money left for their children’s education and well-being. With no education and empty stomachs, these children too take up the same task for survival, making it a vicious cycle for the community.”

In Haryana, sewer lines, which are maintained by the public health engineering department, serve only towns and cities. The huge rural population depends on septic tanks for sewage storage and treatment. In developed districts like Faridabad, the town area comprises only a quarter of the whole district while in Rohtak, the town or city area is barely one-tenth of the district’s total area.

Even cities aren’t entirely served by sewer lines. For instance, Faridabad city has a 635-km network of sewer lines that serves 30 percent of the total population, as per a 2020 study by the Centre for Science and Environment. The remaining population uses a hybrid system of onsite containment systems, such as septic tanks.

So, there’s a vast population using septic tanks, which are private and do not fall under the PHE department. The task to clean them falls to private players, and the government washes its hands off this responsibility. This lack of accountability is common across the country.

‘Man and machine have to work together’

Ravi’s eyesight was impacted as a result of hydrogen sulphide, commonly known as “sewer gas”. It irritates the eyes, skin and respiratory tracts, and can cause nausea, delirium, convulsions and unconsciousness.  

In Rohtak district, sanitation worker Sanjay has a trick to escape the toxic fumes.

“We remove the cover of the manhole and keep it open for a whole day so the gas mixes with open air,” he said. “After that, there is no problem.” At the end of the day, he suggested a bath with “hot water and Dettol soap” to get rid of any remnants from sewer lines.

Sanjay has been a sanitation worker for 16 years, crawling into manholes to fix the hoppers of bucket-type sewer cleaning machines that clear silt from sewer lines. He said the hopper can only be fixed manually, which means someone needs to climb into the manhole – even though this is technically part of a mechanised cleaning process.

When Newslaundry met Sanjay at Rohtak’s JP Colony on February 9, he had just emerged from a manhole, caked in sludge. He wore shorts, a t-shirt, a polythene bag on his head, and a safety belt that hooked him to the top of the manhole. That was the extent of his “safety equipment”.

“Machine and man have to work together to clear the silt in the sewer,” explained Vicky Bhandari, a supervisor who oversees the work by the sanitation workers. “Sanjay has to go down to fix the hopper and pass a wire through it. Only then the machine will work.”

Vicky and Sanjay are hired by the same contractor that operates a bucket machine for the public health engineering department, which is responsible for maintaining and cleaning sewer lines in Haryana. The department also owns two jetting machines, one super-sucker machine and three of its own bucket machines. Additionally, it employs 176 “sewermen” – an unofficial designation in Haryana for people like Sanjay who clean Rohtak’s 560-km network of sewer lines and 18,666 manholes. 

Some of these “sewermen” are regularised employees. The others are contract workers under the Haryana Kaushal Rozgar Nigam, a scheme set up in 2021 to provide contractual manpower to “all government entities in Haryana”. This replaced the previous setup of government departments outsourcing manpower requirements to contractors. Workers hired by contractors were brought under the new scheme and given benefits like provident fund and ESI.

But Haryana’s “sewermen” said the scheme merely replaced the “small contractor with a bigger one”.

“We are still contractual. The exception is that now our PF is deducted,” said Sonu, contractually employed as a sanitation worker in Hisar for nearly 30 years. “We don’t get salaries as high as regular workers nor do we get safety equipment to perform our tasks.”

Sonu said he has “completely stopped” entering manholes as a result, trying instead to “clean it from above”. “Unions also keep a close eye and try to prevent such incidents as much as possible,” he said, saying workers in Hisar try their best not to enter manholes at all.

But it’s not always possible. 

Hisar district has one super-sucker machine, three jetting machines, three bucket machines and three robots to clean around 70 MLD of sewage generated by 85,000 households per day. According to SK Tyagi, executive engineer at Hisar’s public health engineering department, they spend between Rs 30-40 lakh per month to maintain and clean sewage lines in Hisar town.

While this process is, on paper, mechanised, the machines can’t always enter narrow lanes, where workers are then deputed to clean manholes by hand. Tyagi said the deployment of bucket machines has solved this issue, and workers enter manholes “only when there is an emergency”. He also said workers are provided with “all the safety equipment such as masks, safety belts, boots and hand gloves”. 

Newslaundry asked at least 10 sanitation workers in Hisar whether they were provided with this equipment. Most of them said they don’t get safety gear to perform their task. Some sanitation workers in Barwala maintained that they do get safety equipment such as safety belt,  gloves and oxygen cylinder but Newslaundry could not verify the same as  they show only the safety belt, saying oxygen cylinder is there but don’t know where it is.

Importantly, in April last year, four men died in Budha Khera village in Hisar after they entered a sanitation tank. Two of them were sanitation workers who never emerged; the other two entered the tank to rescue them but died as well.

‘Open secret’ that sewermen enter manholes

Unions might be strict about not permitting workers to enter manholes but Sarv Karamchari Sangh’s Suresh Kumar alleged that contractors “bring workers from outside and make them go inside manholes”.

When asked about this, Tyagi said if such things happen on the ground, the people involved should inform the department.

“We have a chain of command like junior engineers and supervisors on the field, and we are at the office,” he said. “There are toll-free numbers as well through which one can inform us about such things. Forcing someone to enter a manhole is illegal and if we come to know about such incidents, strict action will be taken against them.”

He told Newslaundry he will be “more vigilant” from now on too.

Similar allegations were raised in Faridabad. Anoop Shandilya, head of the Sewerman Union in Faridabad, said contractors “engage workers from outside” to enter manholes. “This can result in death as most of them are unfamiliar with the sewage system of the city and have no prior experience cleaning it,” he said.

In Faridabad, the municipal corporation is in charge of cleaning the 635-km network of sewer lines. Superintendent engineer Ombir Singh told Newslaundry the corporation outsourced the work to seven or eight contractors who own machines to carry out the cleaning since the corporation itself “doesn’t have a sufficient number of machines and staff”.

According to Singh, the Faridabad municipal corporation owns four jetting machines and two super-sucker machines but they are “old”. Members of the sewermen union said the machines “don’t work properly” too. So, the municipal corporation spends Rs 18 crore a year to hire contractors. This is expenditure to clean smaller sewer lines and does not include spending on cleaning bigger lines. 

But one of the contractors told Newslaundry, on condition of anonymity, that it was “not possible” to clean sewer lines without someone manually entering them.

“This is an open secret but nobody will say this on record,” he said. “For example, we use a jetting machine to clean a sewer line that’s 20 feet deep. If the jet gets stuck, a man has to go down and fix it. Without a man, it’s not possible.”

Showing this reporter a photograph of a worker climbing into a manhole, the contractor said he provides safety equipment like gloves, safety belts, and masks. 

This reporter asked why the worker in the photo didn’t have protective gear apart from a mask, safety belt and underwear. 

The contractor said, “Those who clean sewers are like this only. I have never seen them suffering from skin disease in my three years of experience.”

He refused to send Newslaundry a copy of the photograph saying it would “harm” his business.