Telangana Urban Development Minister K T Rama Rao today paid ex-gratia to the victims of an accident in Hyderabad on August 14 where four persons died of asphyxiation after getting deep into a manhole and entering a sewer.
In an event organized for the purpose, KTR blamed the contractor for the deaths of the workers, and vowed to provide their kin with jobs besides the ex-gratia. He also interacted with several GHMC sanitation workers, and assured them of appropriate uniforms and safety measures to avoid such incidents in future.
The tragedy also seems to have triggered an epiphany - KTR stated that from now on sewers in the State would be cleaned by machines instead of GHMC workers. He promised to make Hyderabad a tech-driven city where eventually all such harmful and degrading jobs would be handled using technology.
KTR also said that a comprehensive cleanliness drive would be taken up to make Hyderabad a clean city, and rolled out 176 new "swachch autos" as one step in the exercise. These are auto-rickshaws fitted with equipment to clean the roads that they are travelling on.
Later, the minister also felicitated the best labourers in the GHMC, and gave out rewards of Rs. 5,000 to each one of them.