The price of keeping our city clean: BWSSB worker loses eyesight

A BWSSB contract sanitary worker has suffered vision impairment in both eyes due to an injury caused by water mixed with bleaching powder (calcium hypochlorite). The incident happened last year but he's yet to get any compensation.

"It started to burn right after the bleaching water-mixed water got into my eyes," Munikrishna recalled. When he told the BWSSB officials, they thought it was a minor thing and hoped he would be fine in a day.

Munikrishna, who lives in a 350-square foot house with his wife and two teenaged sons, had to keep working to support his family. He was never given any protective gear. Twenty days later, objects started getting blurry and everything was reduced to a shape.

He sold a television set, his wife's mangalsutra and some home appliances to pay for the treatment.

Documents show that in June 2020, doctors at Narayana Nethralaya diagnosed him with exudative maculopathy, a disease involving the degeneration of the central retina, that usually affects elderly or diabetic patients.

Munikrishna was told that the bleaching powder has damaged his nervous system that supplies blood to the retina. "I was told that each eye requires a drug that costs Rs 25,000 if I get it treated immediately. By that time, I had sold almost everything at home to pay about Rs 75,000 for various tests. I wasn't able to get another Rs 50,000 as even my own brother didn't help," he said.

To make matters, he was fired from the job, and the family struggled to make ends meet.

Munikrishna's elder son, studying second-year PUC, came forward to work. But with no jobs available, Munikrishna begged Navodya Service Centre, the private agency outsourced by the BWSSB, to give hire his son.

The son eventually got a job that pays him Rs 14,500 a month. Life's struggles — paying the rent, buying the essentials, etc, — sapped Munikrishna's will to fight and he decided not to pursue the matter with the BWSSB.

"I was already looking at myself as a burden on the family and was in no mood to fight," he said.

Samuel Sathyaseelan, a PhD student looking into the problems of sanitary workers, said people working with BWSSB didn't get any benefits given to pourakarmikas. "The BWSSB hasn't implemented government schemes for civic workers. BWSSB workers get the safety gear only once a year. Most of them don't know anything about sick leave or other benefits," he said.

The absence of a union hasn't helped the cause of sanitary workers. The BWSSB Employees' Union hasn't been active for some time.

Lawyer S Balan, who founded the union, reportedly left after some members were found involved in activities that were detrimental to the union.

While Balan says he still takes up the cause of employees who approach him, he isn't aware of Munikrishna's case. "Fighting for contract employees has become a big challenge because the Centre's labour codes have made it impossible to implicate the principal employer," he told DH.

According to Balan, 600 sanitary workers and thousands of watermen had suffered serious problems. The union has filed 1,500 cases but many issues remain unresolved, he said.

BWSSB Chairman N Jayaram said the incident hadn't come to his notice but promised to look into it. "If he was not given a safety gear, it's a worrying factor. It is unfortunate that the labourer didn't raise the matter with us," he said and suggested that Munikrishna file a petition.

(For those interested, Munikrishna can be reached at [phone] or [phone].)