City Profile
Jamshedpur or Tatanagar is a city located in the state of Jharkhand, India. It is one of the largest and most industrialized cities in the state, and is often referred to as the “Steel City” which has a Notified Area Council (NAC) as an authorized institution to look after the basic amenities of the town which is spread over an area of 64 sq. km. and has a population of around 7.7 Lakh. Along with Nellore, Andhra Pradesh, Jamshedpur achieved the “Safaimitra Surakshit Shehar” targets of eliminating the hazardous cleaning of sewer lines in the 3-10 lakh category.
Challenge
The city has four operational sewage treatment plants of combined capacity to treat 64 million liters per day (MLD) of sewage generated. Approximately 89% of the households in this planned city are linked through a network of sewer lines spanning 579 kilometers, including 20,000 maintenance holes.
The city was able to understand that the challenges it faced were three-fold:
- Technical: The city has unplanned construction of maintenance holes, which also led to non-uniform manhole designs, a difficult approach for cleaning the maintenance holes and made it difficult for a single machine to address all the maintenance problems.
- Safety: The desilting of sewer lines required manual entry, which led the sanitation workers to be exposed to poisonous gases and unhygienic conditions. Further, the depth of each manhole was different, leading to decreased availability of oxygen.
- Social: The job entailed limited work dignity and self-respect.
Initiative
To address the challenges of manual scavenging and achieve the targets of the “Safaimitra Surakshit Shehar” the NAC brought the following initiatives:
The technical challenge was the design of the maintenance holes. The maintenance holes previously designed were not planned, and also the approach for cleaning these maintenance holes was not available. To aid the cleaning, the designs of existing maintenance holes were changed after dismantling and recasting the top slab of the manhole. By adding three openings in T shape and two openings in L shale, the NAC was able to ensure that the maintenance holes could be easily accessed by machines, thereby preventing manual entry of sanitation workers.
The safety aspect of the challenge involved the hazardous practice of manual entry by sanitation workers into sewer lines, exposing them to toxic gases and unhygienic conditions. To address this issue, the NAC ensured the availability of mechanized sanitation infrastructure in accordance with CPHEEO standards. Small jetting machines and suction pumps were deployed to enable mechanical cleaning of maintenance holes in narrow lanes. NAC also acquired hand tools to remove silt/material from deep maintenance holes, plastics and thermocol from sewer lines. These tools also prevented the need for manual entry which was required earlier for desilting
Super Sucker Machine
Small Size Jetting Machine
Large Size Jetting Machine
Grabber
Power Bucket Machine
Desludging Machine
The NAC also established the Responsible Sanitation Authority (RSA) and the Sanitation Response Unit (SRU). Special training centres were set up to educate 133 “Safai Mitras” (sanitation workers) on handling mechanized equipment and providing guidance for various work situations. A ban on manual scavenging was officially declared and accompanied by a comprehensive IEC campaign to raise awareness throughout the urban local body (ULB). Further, existing septic tanks were geotagged, and a call centre and mobile applications such as Zimmedaar Nagrik and JUSCO Sahyog were implemented to address sanitation-related concerns.
To ensure sanitation workers’ safety, dignity, and social security, the NAC implemented several measures. Before commencing work, daily toolbox talks were conducted, emphasising the importance of safety protocols, and the workers were provided with personal protective equipment (PPE) kits. Additionally, the officials took steps to motivate the sanitation workers, arranging meals for them and recognising the best performers. Regular health checkups were conducted to monitor their well-being. Furthermore, efforts were made to link all workers to social welfare schemes, including the PM Jivan Jyoti Bima scheme.
Impact
The implementation of these measures effectively tackled the challenges of manual scavenging and yielded substantial positive outcomes. By April 2020, sanitation workers manually entering maintenance holes with depths greater than 2 meters, which was previously prevalent with around 95% participation, was completely eliminated. Similarly, by January 2021, the practice of workers entering maintenance holes with depths less than 2 meters, where approximately 50% used to participate, was also entirely eradicated. The city has also achieved higher levels of compliance with Service Level Agreement (94% in 2019 to 98% in 2022) and customer satisfaction performance score for wastewater services (89% in 2019 and 95% in 2022).
Note: The source of information is the Jamshedpur Notified Area Council’s presentation for the webinar on Safaimitra Suraksha conducted by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA).
