One-third of districts still follow manual scavenging

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

manual scavenging free, nearly a third of the country's 766 districts have yet to overcome the dangerous and unhygienic practice. About 246 districts in the country have neither declared themselves manual scavenging free nor uploaded details of existing insanitary latrines and manual scavengers on the Centre's mobile app, according to data of the social justice and empowerment ministry, the nodal ministry for monitoring manual scavenging.

The data showed that 520 districts have been declared manual scavenging free. At a meeting of the central monitoring committee on Wednesday, the ministry pointed out to the states that between August 2020 and July 2023, at least 20 reminders had been sent to states, district collectors and magistrate to drive the campaign.

Large states such as Maharashtra, Telangana and Odisha have more districts which have not been declared manual scavenging free than those that have been, as per the data. The ministry had initiated two surveys of manual scavengers — first in 2013 and the second in 2018.

About 58,098 manual scavengers were identified across 17 states in the two surveys. The highest number of manual scavengers in a single state were identified in Uttar Pradesh, at 20,884.