Six Srikakulam sanitation workers who cremated COVID victim become outcast

Srikakulam: For the past two days, six sanitation workers have been living without food and water in the veranda of an auditorium in Tekkali in Srikakulam district. The sanitation workers were returning home after cremating the body of a COVID-19 patient in the Meliaputti area in Srikakulam district when the local residents refused to allow them into their street fearing contamination.

The sanitation workers informed the officials of various departments about the issue. Later, they were asked to go to the Ambedkar Auditorium in Tekkali and stay there. They have been living in the veranda of the building for the past two days. The officials, however, have failed to supply food and water to the workers. The workers requested passersby for food and water but they refused.

Six sanitation workers have been living without food and water in the veranda of an auditorium in Tekkali in Srikakulam as villagers refused to allow them as they cremated a #COVID body. The cremation took place at Meliaputti area in Srikakulam. pic.twitter.com/AkXRHWwk4t

— NewsMeter (@NewsMeter_In) July 6, 2020

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Talking to reporters, the workers said they had cremated the body of a COVID-19 patient and now they were being treated as outcasts. As the news went viral, the sub-inspector of Tekkali, B. Ganesh, reached the spot and said the workers will be shifted to a quarantine center at the Degree College.

A few days ago, neighbors and relatives of a woman who had died of COVID-19 refused to help the family cremate her body. The body was later shifted to the cremation ground on a tractor-trolley in the Sompeta area in Srikakulam district.