DHAKA: Indian lawmakers have passed a long-awaited bill to ban manual scavenging, the clearing of human waste from toilets, by workers seen as the ‘ultimate untouchables’ under the country’s ancient Hindu caste-hierarchy.

Already illegal under a largely ineffective 1993 law, the Congress-led government promised to have another go at stamping out the practice with the new legislation which was cleared on late Friday.

The new legislation modifies the 1993 law which criminalised the scavengers who clean out primitive toilets by hand, collect the faecal matter in baskets and take it away in handcarts to dump elsewhere.

‘This dehumanising practice (of manual scavenging) is inconsistent with the right to live with dignity,’ Social Justice Minister Kumari Selja said after passage of the bill, The Straits Times publishes this report on Saturday.

BDST: 1728 HRS, SEPT 07, 2013
RoR/Jck