The UPA government has set a fresh deadline of 2009 for achieving the much-delayed National Mission of Total Eradication of Manual Scavenging, the practice of head loading of night soil by human scavengers.

People engaged in this profession were supposed to have been “liberated” by 2007 and no less than the Prime Minister’s Office and a Central Monitoring Committee set up by the Planning Commission had been monitoring the progress of this mission. Today, the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment has announced a new rehabilitation scheme—Self Employment Scheme for Rehabilitation of Manual Scavengers (SRMS)—to provide an alternative livelihood for scavengers and their family members by March 2007.

The SRMS would give subsidy and extend loans up to Rs 5 lakh to manual scavengers and their dependents on very low interest rates.

Sources said the new scheme has been framed after the much awaited figures of final population of people engaged in the profession came from the states.