:: SALTPAN WORKERS ::

Salt pan workers slog for almost eight to 10 hours in the blazing sun. It's a back-breaking job of cleaning salt pans, filling them with sea water, scraping away the layers of salt and collecting white crystals in tiny mounds for transportation to factories for iodisation. All this work fetches a salt worker a meagre sum of Rs 1,000-Rs1,300 per month. The salt pan owners, disregarding the Minimum Wages Act, decide the wage. There is no medical allowance or relief for old and disabled workers. Besides eye and skin problems, these people, usually from the scheduled caste, suffer from malaria, fever and malnutrition as basic health amenities are not in place here.

Salt pan workers appear to have a high rate of keratitis, possibly due to over-exposure to light or salt by-products. A study was designed with informal collaboration of the National Eye Institute, USA and the office of the Salt Commissioner of India to ascertain the prevalence of salt pan keratitis amongst salt pan workers. Preliminary analysis indicated that salt pan workers have a relative risk of 26.92% of developing salt pan keratitis with a 95 % confidence interval. The study also established that keratitis occurs more frequently in men and in those engaged in scraping work. The study indicates that the salt pan workers are at a greater risk than the general population of developing keratitis.