LUCKNOW: Close to the submission of On the heels of submitting its report following Supreme Court's directive in the manual scavenging case, the Lucknow Municipal Corporation has found close to 25 dry toilets in zone-6, believed to be the worst affected area by this social curse in the city. Older parts of Lucknow remain plagued by the inhuman tradition of manual scavenging in the absence of a proper sanitation mechanism. "Due to large number of slums in congested parts of old city, sewage or sanitation infrastructure cannot be provided. People have no choice but to use dry latrines," said a civic official. The practice has been ongoing in slums situated in Maulana Kalbe Abid 1 and 2 municipal wards, which are home to several congested localities such as Saadat Ganj, Kashmiri Mohala, Jawhai Tola and Mahmood Nagar, among others. The findings of LMC are a part of a state-wide exercise to get the actual data on numbers of night-soil carriers in each district. Earlier this month, the apex court had fined four state governments, including Uttar Pradesh for failure to disclose the numbers of manual scavengers and their current situation. Additional municipal commissioner, PK Srivastava was confident that the number of dry toilets within LMC limits will be much lesser than what had been claimed in the PIL. According to petitioners, UP has over 3 lakh dry toilets, out of which 228 are present in Lucknow district. It was also reported that 57 persons remain engaged in manual scavenging in Lucknow. "We want to appeal to such persons to come forward and take benefits of rehabilitation schemes," said Srivastava. In 2011, the Union ministry of social justice & empowerment in a report submitted to National Advisory Council admitted that out of the identified 9,548 manual scavenger families in Uttar Pradesh, 67% did not receive any loan or assistance. Furthermore, Rashtriya Garima Abhiyan, a national campaign for dignity and eradication of manual scavenging, highlighted how funds meant for rehabilitation of manual scavengers under Self-Employment Scheme for Rehabilitation of Manual Scavengers, 2007 were being siphoned off in the state. The law prohibiting employment of manual scavengers was framed about two decades back, but till date not a single conviction has been witnessed. In fact, Indian Railways is the biggest offender owing to large number of dry toilets and coaches with open-discharge toilets. Government of India had prohibited manual scavenging practice in 1993 through an Act.