Hyderabad: Water Board holds 'Safety Awareness Week'

Hyderabad: The Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (HMWS&SB) on Wednesday organised a 'Safety Awareness Week at Work' programme in all its divisions. The board staff, including workers, took a pledge for taking safety measures and ensure using safety equipment while on duty.

Addressing the staff, board managing director Dana Kishor said, "the aim of the security week is to create awareness on safety measures to be taken by workers and staff on duty and precautions to be taken by the public at open manholes."

The programme was organised at all board divisions in GHMC limits and under ORR (Outer Ring Road) limits. Public representatives and board officials participated in the awareness programme.

According to Dana Kishor, a week-long awareness programmes on sewage management and security will be conducted for sewage staff from May 25. They will focus on workers' approach to what to do and what not to do in wastewater management, proper approach to use security equipment, benefits to be derived from it, and approach to be adopted while undertaking sanitation work. The staff has been instructed to set up barricades.

He said that the board is using mini air tech machines for unmanned sanitation work like nowhere else in the country. "Equipment such as network crack has been designed to clean manholes with machines. Due to this, cleaning of manholes was being done without any human intervention. On the implementation of Standard Operating Procedure guidelines on sanitation work, he explained the performance of security equipment, how they are used, the precautions to be taken while cleaning manholes, as well as any accidental occurrence of personnel in case of an accident during duty management.

The board GMs have directed all sewage workers in the area to be made aware of need to wear safety equipment, such as gloves, gumboots, masks and bodysuits, to ensure that they don't fail to perform duty.

Officials said there are more than five lakh manholes in the city. The citizens should not dump waste like shampoo packets, plastic/food waste, bottles, pillows, carpets, polythene covers, glass pieces, stones and bricks in manholes. They advised the citizens to properly construct silts in apartments and commercial buildings.

The board has asked the citizens to contact customer care and helpline 155313 for any issue related to sewage.