'Well-educated kids of sanitation workers shun cleaning job'

The unhygienic conditions of BBMP-maintained school toilets is being blamed on the fact that children of sanitation workers have become too well-educated to take up sanitation work.

This was the statement given by the education standing committee chairperson, B Govindaraju, who told Deccan Herald, that children of the sanitation workers have become reluctant to take up their ancestral profession whereas the elders have grown too old to toil.

“I have seen that children of the Pourakarmikas are unwilling to take up the work because of their high education level. They are ashamed of doing sanitation work and I believe they are right. But the shortage of sweepers has led to a crisis-like situation in the City,”he said.

He claimed that parts of modern Bangalore resemble backward areas of the State and that sweepers are being sought from neighbouring regions. “We urgently need at least 40 sanitary workers and for that we look towards the regions like Gulbarga and Raichur to meet our requirements,” he added.

To ensure clean and hygienic toilets in Palike schools, the civic body plans to outsource jobs.
According to Govindaraju, “Some schools do not have toilets which we had planned to build from funds our committee received from former deputy mayor S Harish. However, the biggest challenge is the acute shortage of sweepers.”

It was recently revealed that in many BBMP schools, teachers were prepared to shell out good money to have the toilets cleaned, but could not get sanitation workers prepared to clean them. The fear of students and teachers contracting infectious diseases is high in such schools.