Few sanitation workers getting training, info on health checkups: Survey

Sanitation workers and rag-pickers face risk from the handling of unmarked medical waste emerging from homes where Covid-19 patients are quarantined.

India has now reported more than 1.5 million Covid-19 cases, making it the country with the third-highest number of cases in the world after the US and Brazil. But even as the contagion surges across the country, sanitation workers continue to be inadequately protected, noted a report based on a telephonic survey of 214 sanitation workers in five states and two metros by two independent researchers. It found:

Nearly 64% of 188 sanitation staff who worked during April-May 2020 received no instructions or training related to their safety from Covid-19 infection.

Nearly 93% of 192 workers reported that they were not given any instructions regarding health checkup.

Fifty-five of the 57 (96.5%) women reported no special arrangement was made for them at work.

Of the 214 respondents of the survey conducted during April-May, 70% were male and 30% female. While 80 (37.4%) participants were government employees, more than half, 117, had been hired by contractors and 17 (7.9%) were working independently, directly taking up sanitation work in non-governmental spaces.

Of the seven locations, Madhya Pradesh had the most respondents (31%), followed by Assam (27%), Delhi (16%), Mumbai (15%), Uttar Pradesh (6%), Jharkhand (4%) and Chhattisgarh (1%).

Sanitation workers and rag-pickers face risk from the handling of unmarked medical waste emerging from homes where Covid-19 patients are quarantined, as IndiaSpend reported on April 9. Sanitation workers--just like doctors, nurses and community health workers--are exposed to the infection, but unlike the medical professionals, they do not know how to take precautions, said experts cited in the report.