CHENNAI: The secretary of the ministry of housing, urban and poverty alleviation, New Delhi, has been directed by the Madras High Court to appear before it on June 23 and file an affidavit with regard to amendment of the Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prevention) Act, 1993.The First Bench, comprising Chief Justice M Y Eqbal and Justice T S Sivagnanam, gave the direction on Wednesday while passing further interim orders on a contempt application from social worker A Narayanan, also editor of Padam.Originally, Narayanan filed a public interest writ petition and the High Court on November 20, 2008 passed a comprehensive order on elimination of manual scavenging. Alleging that the authorities had not complied with the directions, Narayanan filed the present contempt application.When the matter came up on February 1 this year, the State informed the court that it had requested the Centre to make suitable amendments to the Manual Scavengers (Prohibition) Act. And the bench directed the government to speed up the issue. When the matter came up again on March 29, the bench was told that the government had sent a corrected draft to the Centre. Again when the petition was taken up on May 11, the union ministry secretary was directed to implead as a party respondent.However, as there was no progress till June 15, the disappointed judges observed that the matter had been lingering for quite sometime and no effective steps were forthcoming. “It appears that the ministry has not shown seriousness in the matter... and unless a stringent law (to eliminate manual scavenging) is enacted, a solution cannot be achieved in the near future,” the bench said.
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