One of them is 21-year-old Umesh Bandge who works as a garbage collector. “My father was also working in the garbage collection wing of PMC and died due to TB in 2004 when he was only 45. He faced lot of medical problems and every day was a struggle for us. Neither was my father given any protective equipment then nor am I getting anything now,” he says. For the year 2004, in which his father died, no data on death on duty has been collated yet.

“The PMC has provided financial assistance to kin of all the 107 Class IV employees who died of various ailments due to working in unhygienic conditions in 2006-07,” said Human Resources incharge and PMC labour officer Nandkumar Jagtap.

But that is of little comfort to those like Bandge. Admits Municipal Commissioner Praveensinh Pardeshi: “The PMC cannot be forgiven if it fails to provide required safety equipment to the conservancy staff as not one death should take place due to lack of protective equipment. I am personally looking into it and the PMC has decided to provide gloves, masks, gumboots to the conservancy staff so that they don’t get in physical contact of the waste as it is hazardous to their health.”

Medical experts say that while no cause-effect relationship can be established between the death of workers and their work, there is no escaping the fact that inequipped with safety equipment they are exposed to adverse conditions. Says chief of the Maharashtra chapter of the Indian Medical Association Devendra Shirole: “Death at 45 cannot be solely linked to working conditions but in the case of conservancy staff, they come into contact with disease-causing micro-organisms. Safety measures are critical and in their absence, they are prone to diseases.”

... contd.