Two men died of asphyxiation on Friday, May 31, allegedly after inhaling toxic fumes while cleaning a waste tank in a restaurant in Kozhikode of Kerala. The Chevayur police are conducting an investigation and are yet to register a first information report (FIR). The two men have been identified as G Reneesh (42) from Naduvannur and Ashokan from Mankayam. The police are yet to contact the family of Ashokan.
The restaurant named Amma’s Hotel in Kalandithazham had shut down a month ago and the restaurant owners were supposed to clean and hand over the premises to the building owners, the police said. The owners had hired Reneesh and Ashokan to clean the tank where waste water from the restaurant was collected.
On Friday afternoon, they had opened the tank and entered it but fainted and fell into the tank. After the restaurant in-charge alerted the ambulance and fire and rescue services, their bodies were retrieved and sent to the Kozhikode Government Medical College Hospital.
When asked about the nature of the tank to ascertain if it was an instance of manual scavenging, the police said further investigation is underway. According to The Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013, a “manual scavenger” is any person who is employed or involved in “manually cleaning, carrying, disposing of, or otherwise handling in any manner, human excreta,” be it in an insanitary latrine, open drain or pit into which the human excreta from the insanitary latrines is disposed of, or on a railway track or in any other spaces or premises. This definition does not include septic tanks or other waste water tanks.
Speaking to TNM, state convener of Safai Karamchari Andolan Sundarraj Pappathi said that it was not yet clear if it was an instance of manual scavenging death. “But it has been at least 3 to 4 years since such a death happened in Kerala,” he added.
In a response to an RTI query filed by TNM in 2022 about the data of manual scavengers and deaths reported among them in Kozhikode, the Kozhikode corporation had stated that no such worker was identified under its jurisdiction.
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