Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment Mukul Wasnik Monday said that India was making 'rigorous efforts' to keep the March 2010 deadline for abolishing manual scavenging.
'India had made March 31, 2009 the deadline to abolish acts of manual scavenging. However, it was not kept and a new deadline of March 2010 was made. We are making rigorous efforts... There are around 70 days left and we hope that we will meet the deadline this time,' he said while speaking at the 10th Editors Conference on social sector issues here.
Wasnik said that states like Meghalaya, Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and even Delhi are still plagued with the problem.
'A latest report claims that 69,137 scavengers have been rehabilitated ever since the rehabilitation of the manual scavenging act was enacted,' he added.
