Death of sweepers

By Ayesha Sultana Professor of Philosophy, Dhaka University
9 April 2006, 18:00 PM
I was shocked to read a news item published in The Daily Star on April 2, 1906.

Two sweepers while cleaning up an underground sewerage line at Lalbagh died of asphyxia immediately after they entered a manhole. How come it happens that these poor persons taking the risk of life enter these death traps without taking adequate oxygen supplying arrangements with them? Is it because they are poor and there is nobody to speak for them that they will have to accept such suffocating deaths year after year?

I want to know who is going to make compensations for the deaths of these brave stalwarts of cleanliness of our society.

Adequate oxygen supplying arrangement is a must for these risky jobs and such precautions must be taken in future.

If our conscience is not sensitive to such cases, morally we are doomed forever.