Two sanitation workers died and one went missing while cleaning a septic chamber of a private society in Maharashtra’s Pune. The tragic incident happened after the workers were working in a drainage chamber-cum-septic tank manually in the Wagholi area on Friday morning.

The Pune Metropolitan Region Development Authority (PMRDA) informed the police about the incident. The police reached the spot and found that the two workers died of suspected asphyxiation, while the third one is likely to have gotten trapped inside the tank. The search for the third worker is underway, said police.

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PMRDA’s fire brigade department officials said they got the information about the incident at around 7 am. They immediately rushed to the spot and pulled out the two bodies. The officials said the victims may have died due to suffocation as they were working in an 18-foot deep drainage-cum-septic tank.

The residents of the housing society told the police about the possibility of one more person being stuck inside, as they saw three pairs of footwear outside the septic tank.

Meanwhile, manual cleaning of sewers and septic tanks without protective equipment in the country is a punishable offence as per the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Bill, 2012.

According to the reports, the Pune city civic body has installed three robots called Bandicoot to safely clean and maintain city manholes without endangering the lives of workers.

These high-tech robots can clean sewage effectively and have sensors that can detect the presence of foul gas which is one of the main causes of deaths of sanitation workers while cleaning sewage.

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The post Maharashtra: Two workers die, one missing while cleaning septic tank in Pune’s Wagholi; suffocation suspected appeared first on APN News.