By Dr. Virendra Kumar

Thousands of sanitation workers keep our cities and communities running daily, often under hazardous conditions. 

I judge the work of my ministry against one test, which is whether a person still has to enter a sewer or septic tank by hand. 

NAMASTE was designed to end that practice and to work towards zero fatalities in sanitation work, and every other measure I describe here serves that purpose.

The first task was to find the workers. More than 91,000 sewer and septic tank workers have been profiled under the scheme, and more than 90,000 of them have been validated. 

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I value this step more than its dull vocabulary suggests, because a profile gives a worker formal recognition and opens a path into government welfare and social-security programmes. 

It also tells the implementing agencies who they are dealing with, so that safety, healthcare, training and livelihood support can be fitted to real needs. 

Personal Protective Equipment kits have been provided to more than 87,000 workers, and around 77,000 are covered under health-insurance schemes.

Institutions have to be ready as well. More than 750 safety devices have been dispatched to the Emergency Response Sanitation Units set up in larger municipal corporations and districts, where they strengthen emergency response and support the safe, mechanised cleaning of sewers and septic tanks. 

More than 1,600 workshops on preventing hazardous cleaning have brought workers, officials and other stakeholders together to examine the risks of unsafe practice and the case for cleaning by........

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