A year ago, more than 1,000 sanitization laborers under the Chennai Corporation tested positive for the COVID-19. This year, they don’t even have appropriate covers and gloves to get the waste.
What Is The Issue?
On May 1, 2020, Chennai discovered a 41-year-old Nilan pushing a Chennai Corporation tricycle through a street in Royapuram.
Put on the night obligation, his work was to get the house to house waste and put them into the green canister fixed to his cycle for removal. Twenty hours after his May 1 shift, Nilan was hurried to a private clinic’s ICU ward.
“I was wheezing. I had taken tablets for fever a couple of times and it had disappeared. In any case, on May 2, my machan (brother-in-law) accepted to take me to the emergency clinic as my breathing was not ordinary,” Nilan told The News Minute.
A perpetual city laborer of the Greater Chennai Corporation throughout these last 23 years, Nilan lives in a ‘scarcely one room house’ as he depicts it, in Korukkupet, Anna Nagar.
He has a spouse and two youngsters. “At the point when I got a fever, I sent them to three distinct family members’ homes, as I can’t be in confinement with them in the same house. No space,” he said.
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After one year, Nilan, who went through 17 days in an emergency clinic, needed to take care of a bill of Rs 1.9 lakh for the treatment.
He is currently back to picking waste in a similar division of Royapuram, as the city sees record cases and numerous passings in the second wave of COVID-19. And this time around, things are worse.
Nilan says that he at least used to get use-and-throw surgical masks and gloves daily to pick up waste from COVID-19 houses last year. In the second wave, the practice of distributing safety gear to sanitation workers has reduced, he says. A PPE kit might be a distant dream.
As per Nilan, the zonal unit under which he works has been giving 1 set of gloves seven days for conservancy laborers in his division. “I have not gotten any veil for over seven days as they don’t have stock. So I wash my cover and wear it every day,” he says.
Keeping in mind that the Tamil Nadu government in June a year ago declared that cash of Rs. 2 lakh shall be provided to frontline laborers influenced by COVID-19, he says he hasn’t got any cash at this point.
What Does The Organisation Have To Say?
The Madras Corporation Red Flag Union, a worker’s guild for the Chennai Corporation’s lasting staff, has been requesting customary conveyance of veils and gloves for sterilization laborers since the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020.
“Our individuals have been gathering waste from COVID-19 houses, once in a while without gloves. We had requested the GCC to frame separate groups of municipal laborers for COVID-19 waste assortment from houses in each division and to furnish these sterilization laborers with PPE units. It hasn’t occurred at this point,” says Srinivasulu, general secretary of the Red Flag Union.
A sum of 1,500 of the Greater Chennai Corporation’s perpetual specialists tested positive in 2020. There are just 6,200 lasting sanitization laborers under the GCC. 80% of these 1,500 were Sewage Waste Management laborers or waste pickers.
What Is The Current Situation?
This year, the Union expects undeniably more COVID-19 cases and passings among its individuals however is yet to incorporate the rundown.
“Absence of mindfulness keeps a considerable lot of them from getting immunized”, Srinivasulu clarifies.
The state’s government has not offered the need for immunization to these specialists’ close families, who are entirely helpless to the infection. On account of laborers like Nilan, whose family had no space to isolate and Thirumurugan, the whole family must be hospitalized.
With an overstretched Corporation, it is certainly the residents’ obligation to securely discard COVID-19 waste, without hurting a huge number of sterilization laborers who could somehow be presented to the disease.
Notwithstanding, numerous COVID-19 houses have been discarding their trash containers with the overall waste.
Image Credit: Google Images
Sources: TheNewsMinute, WaterPortal, Wire
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This post is tagged under: the municipality, basic health amenities, government, facilities to the workers, Covid-19 cases, administration, covid patients died, India’s health infrastructure, corona, covid victims, maintaining the COVID-19 guideline, a citizen of India, last rites, funeral, real heroes risking their lives, Modi, hard-to-access health services, oxygen contractors, respirators, and basic health services,e national fight against the pandemic, workers, and their families
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