Over 70 percent of sanitation workers in India have a monthly household income of less than Rs 10,000, according to a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) survey released on Tuesday. While 67 percent of them have a bank account, almost four-fifths of them didn’t have a Jan Dhan account, limiting their access to direct government benefits. India generates about a tenth of the world’s solid waste and is the third largest producer of it, according to an estimate by Delhi-based think tank Observer Research Foundation.
With most urban local bodies ill equipped to handle waste management, the country faces significant challenges in collecting, segregating, transporting, treating and disposing of its waste, and an estimated 5 million sanitation workers are an integral but largely informal part of this waste management economy. These workers, also called ‘waste pickers’ or ‘safai sathis’ clean, sort, collect, transport and deliver recyclables to aggregators and material recovery facilities (MRFs).
But about 40 percent of them do not have ration cards, less than 15 percent have an ATM card and less than 5 percent have access to digital payment methods and health insurance, despite them working as frontline workers during the pandemic, showed the UNDP survey.
“These safai sathis are invisible environmentalists, and their social inclusion is an essential step. We need to formally integrate these workers in our waste management economy. NITI Aayog will be engaging with line ministries such as ministry of urban affairs and ministry of social justice to enhance resilience of waste pickers in the country” said Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog. Shoko Noda, resident representative, UNDP India, said that safai sathis play a key role in plastic recycling and this baseline mapping exercise of their socioeconomic status will help all stakeholders including urban local bodies plan interventions for their financial inclusion in a more meaningful way.
Women earned lower than men, engage in more informal work
Besides being low-income households, families of sanitation workers tend to be large, with our members on average, which means the little money earned has to be spent on more people. Women, those with no formal education and those belonging to socially disadvantaged communities are more vulnerable when it comes to livelihoods. A higher proportion of women work as street sweepers or waste pickers at landfills, indicating their concentration in work that is more informal in nature within the waste management ecosystem. About 33 percent women also earned less than Rs 5000 per month compared to 20 percent of men, from over 9,000 people surveyed by UNDP across the country.
These workers also often lack protection under labour rights frameworks and laws. Their contributions to both the overall economy and the recycling economy remain largely invisible due to the informal nature of their work, the reason Kant dubbed them the ‘invisible environmentalists’.
“The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to have been devastating for the waste-picker community considering the informality of their work, their presence at the frontlines, low levels of household income and high average family size. This is especially true for more vulnerable cohorts such as women, those who are socially disadvantaged, and those who have no formal education,” according to the report.
Lack of financial inclusion
Even though a majority of sanitation workers had access to a bank account, only 21 percent of them had a Jan Dhan account. Having a Jan Dhan account helps the person receive direct benefit transfers under a host of public schemes such as the Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana, a government-backed life insurance scheme, Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana, a government-backed accident insurance scheme, Atal Pension Yojana, a government-backed pension scheme for people in the unorganised sector, and the Micro Units Development and Refinance Agency Bank (MUDRA), a government scheme that helps a small borrower in non-farming activity take small loans from banks, among others.
Among the waste pickers, ownership of a bank account was particularly low among migrant workers, among those with no formal education and those whose monthly household income was below Rs 10,000, found the report. Interestingly, women and those from socially disadvantaged communities reported higher levels of ownership of bank accounts.
While 90 percent of workers owned an Aadhaar card, on average, only around 5 percent had a birth certificate and 0.5 percent had a caste or income certificate. These certificates often function as requirements in creating other beneficiary documents and are needed while registering safai sathis in other schemes. For instance, these help workers access welfare interventions, get admission in schools, and also act as a supporting document to access the public distribution system.
Those with no formal education and those earning below Rs 10,000 per month reported less ownership of all identification documents.
In fact, of the 43 percent of workers without a ration card, which helps them access subsidised grains, groceries and other essentials at subsidised rates through the public distribution system, almost a quarter cited the lack of supporting evidence as the main reason for not owning one. Another 15 percent said they do not know how to get a ration card, a reason mostly cited by workers with no formal education and those hailing from socially disadvantaged sections. Also, areas with a higher share of migrant workers reported lower ownership of ration cards.
Only 10 percent of workers have an occupational card, according to the report. NITI Aayog’s Kant underscored the need to expedite work on issuing occupational cards that can accelerate the process of formalising both the work and workers in the sanitation space. Last month, nominated Rajya Sabha MP Narendra Jadhav had raised the same issue in Parliament. “Out of 4 million waste collectors in India, a majority belong to SC and ST (scheduled caste and tribe) communities. They migrate to big cities in search of livelihood and get exploited. The workers have not been provided with the mandatory identity cards according to the Swachh Bharat Mission Rules, 2016, which can protect them,” he had said.
Only 5% had health insurance though they were frontline workers in the pandemic
The ownership of health cards or health insurance was reported by less than 5 percent of workers despite the workers being part of the country's COVID-19 response, as frontline workers. “Lack of access to medical benefits increases out-of-pocket expenses on health for these individuals, therefore increasing their likelihood of taking on more debt,” the UNDP report said. Out-of-pocket spending of 65-70 percent on healthcare is one of the main causes of people being pushed into poverty in the country. A majority of the workers also reported living in temporary and unorganised accommodation, indicating a lack of housing security.
Owing to poor waste management practices, a land-size equal to New Delhi will have to be dedicated for waste disposal through landfilling by 2050, a PwC-Assocham estimated in 2017, urging the government to grant ‘industry status’ to the waste management sector and regulate it. At present, most of the waste in India is dumped without proper treatment. “If you do not take care of your waste managers, how can you ask them to take care of your waste management?” said an industry expert, requesting anonymity.
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