Nearly 64% of 188 sanitation staff who worked during April-May 2020 received no

instructions or training related to their safety from Covid-19 infection.

Nearly 93% of 192 workers reported that they were not given any instructions
regarding health checkup.
Fifty-five of the 57 – or 96.5% – women reported no special arrangement was made
for them at work.
Of the 214 respondents of the survey conducted during April-May, 70% were male and
30% female. While 80 – 37.4% – participants were government employees, more than
half, 117, had been hired by contractors and 17 – 7.9% – were working
independently, directly taking up sanitation work in non-governmental spaces.

Of the seven locations, Madhya Pradesh had the most respondents at 31%, followed by
Assam at 27%, Delhi at 16%, Mumbai at 15%, Uttar Pradesh at 6%, Jharkhand at 4%,
and Chhattisgarh at 1%.

Sanitation workers and rag-pickers face risk from the handling of unmarked medical
waste emerging from homes where Covid-19 patients are quarantined, as IndiaSpend
reported on April 9. Sanitation workers – just like doctors, nurses and community
health workers – are exposed to the infection, but unlike the medical
professionals, they do not know how to take precautions, said experts cited in the
report.