CM’s visit to sanitation workers’ colonies sparks spruce-up effort

Rat-infested homes and poor sanitation are just some of the issues faced by residents of Kasarwadi and Gautam Nagar

Mumbai: They clean up the city’s waste and their living conditions almost match the daily grime they clear. All that is poised to change for at least two colonies where sanitation workers reside -- Kasarwadi in Dadar West and Gautam Nagar in Dadar East. An action plan is being chalked out to improve their basic needs, hygiene and infrastructure.

A view of Kasarwadi chawl located at Dadar. (Bhushan Koyande/HT Photo)

This outcome is the result of chief minister Eknath Shinde’s visit here on October 2, when he heard the distressed residents’ grievances. They have been complaining to Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) for years. After speaking to them and witnessing their abject living conditions, the CM instructed BMC to formulate a plan to improve the two colonies first in the next three months, and subsequently replicate it in the remaining 42.

The colony in Kasarwadi is home to around 250 families, with at least one member working as a municipal sanitation worker: they are sweepers, motor loaders, toilet cleaners etc. Each has inherited this life from an average of at least three generations past, through a system of preferential treatment (called PT case, in civic body parlance). The accommodations, first allotted by the British, are not free; their approximate rent is ₹8000 per month, deducted from their salaries which range between ₹15,000 and ₹40,000.

Prabha Purabhiya, whose one brother is a sweeper and another a toilet cleaner, points to the open drain which is also broken in places and then the open gaps in the passageway her front door opens to. “Water from other houses and outlets all flow here. It is perpetually dirty. The rats don’t let us sleep at night,” she said. The board wedged to fix the gap at the bottom of the door is unable to ward off the rats. When this correspondent visited the quarters, she found one unwelcome visitor sniffing around the kitchen. After dark, an army crawls out.

Her neighbour, Uma Sawariya, whose son is a sweeper, has a different problem. The family has no space to shower and the public toilets in the chawl don’t have water supply. Taps, doors and tiles are broken. Some residents carry water in buckets to bathe. “We have to shower in the passage of our house right behind the front door,” she said.

The wall shared by the neighbours is damp with peeling paint. Almost all the families complain of leak in the walls and roofs and there are holes in the make-shift roofs. One of the residents, Vivek Solanki, a garbage truck loader, has used plastic to plug the holes, which gives way during monsoons.

The colony in Gautam Nagar is almost a mirror image of Kasarwadi. There are two buildings with 60 flats. During monsoon, water floods the houses on the ground floor and walls swell up with seepage. Last year, Namdeo Pawar, a retired motor loader, put a mark four feet ground up where the flood water had reached.

There are chawls surrounding both neighbourhoods as well where many sanitation workers reside.

Their collective complaints went unheeded, forcing the residents to fix their homes by themselves. “Their silence almost feels like they are telling us ‘Kachrewale hai, kachre me hi rahenge’. But we are the ones that clean the city,” said Jayesh Solanki, a toilet cleaner.

Officials from G/North ward (Kasarwadi) and F/South ward (Gautam Nagar) said sewer lines will be changed, leaking roofs replaced, toilets repaired and power connections reinstated. Additionally, uneven pathways will be smoothened and streetlights added. At Kasarwadi, a small garden will be built, a study room created and a kabaddi ground renovated. The budget for the uplift of this colony is ₹24 crore, while that of Gautam Nagar is ₹7.5 crore.

Repairs have begun at Kasarwadi. Both neighbourhoods have HBD clinics now, opened recently. A doctor at the Kasarwadi clinic said she has already diagnosed two cases of malaria already.

In the future, the colonies for sanitation workers across the city will go into redevelopment under the Ashray Yojana Scheme, announced in 2013. After 10 years, the first work order – for Gautam Nagar – has been issued, and the second is expected. It’s a complex issue, as fearing loss of their homes, the residents have refused to move until guaranteed alternative accommodation.