Census 2011 reveals 12,226 manual scavengers in country till 2015-16: Govt

New Delhi, May 21: As many as 12,226 manual scavengers were identified during 2015-16 and there is no sizeable increase this year in their number in the country, according to Registrar General of India, Census 2011 data.
There are about 26 lakh insanitary latrines in 34 states/ union territories in the country, suggesting existence of sizeable number of manual scavengers, according to the data.
The survey also reveals that only 4,482 manual scavengers were identified till 2015 and a total of 12,737 of them have been identified till January 31, 2017.
The government is disappointed to note this slow progress in the identification of manual scavengers by the states/UTs.
The committee feels that Housing Census 2011 reported 26 lakh insanitary latrines then 12,737 is too less a number to service the given number of insanitary latrines and therefore committee exhorts the department to impress upon the state governments to carry out a fresh survey in a time bound manner to identify more scavengers, so that the scheme started for their welfare by the government could be useful.