The Union government on December 5 told Lok Sabha that 49 persons had died this year till November 20 due to unsafe cleaning of sewers and septic tanks, while also clarifying that it has no data on the number of “manhole cleaning robots” deployed across the country or where they were being used.
The information was made public by Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment Ramdas Athawale, and comes in the wake of city authorities in West Bengal, Maharashtra, and Kerala making public statements through the year about introducing such machinery for sewer-cleaning.
Also read | Manhole misery: A cry for a cleanup
