MANUAL SCAVENGERS MOVEMENT

That this House notes with immense concern that some 1.3 million Dalits, formerly called untouchables, in India, mostly women, are still employed as manual scavengers, a job which consists of removing human excrement from dry toilets and sewers using basic tools such as flimsy thin boards, not even shovels, and baskets, despite this inhumane practice being abolished by law in 1993; welcomes the initiative of Safai Karmachari Andolan, the Manual Scavengers Movement, and the Dalit Solidarity Network (UK) to work together to try to eradicate manual scavenging in the whole of India by the start of the Delhi Commonwealth Games in October 2010; and calls on the Department for International Development to assist the Indian government to implement its own legislation and re-training programmes and to end, once and for all, the inhumane and dangerous practice of manual scavenging.