Rajendra Pillai still can’t believe that his friends are dead. The contract labourer had accompanied Sayyed Rauf, 50, Annadurai Velumail, 52, and Gunpati Viraswamy, 42, to inspect the cleaning of a septic tank at a newly-opened public toilet in Kandivli West on Thursday. “Gunpati and I opened the lid of the septic tank, but after assessing the work, I told my friends that Rs 500 was too small an amount for the work we were expected to do. I asked them to demand more money from the contractor. They laughed at me and said that he’d not give us an extra penny. I refused to take up the job and left the spot,” he recalls, while speaking to mid-day on Saturday. That same day, around 7 pm, Pillai learnt that his friends had died while cleaning the tank. “If I had agreed to work, I would have died too.”

Though India banned the practice of manual scavenging under the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013, many contract labourers are still being illegally hired for the hazardous job and paid measly wages. While the BMC charges anywhere between R20,000 and R30,000 to clean septic tanks with the help of a suction machine, sanitation workers are being hired for as low as Rs 250.