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It rains for a long time, every time a drain flows and the trash piles every time, countless cleaning workers, mostly backward backgrounds, move on to clean the dirt. However, Pakistan’s cleaning manpower is and works in terms of systematic discrimination, exploitation and neglect. The definition of ILO’s decent work, which is connected to freedom, equity, security and human dignity, is a dream for them. A recent report by Amnesty International, developed with the Center for Law and Justice, shows that people who clean the dirt of the country are sometimes considered to be disposable.
The report is based on the evidence of more than 230 workers interviewing in six districts, providing 66 detailed accounts. His experiences paint a serious picture of structural injustice. Near half said that they were subjected to derogatory dirt like Chaura, Bhangi and Jumdar. More than half said that his caste or faith had determined the jobs he was offered, many people were forced to clean the role of cleaning even when they applied for other positions. It reflects a discriminatory mindset in ways that it prevents workers from social movements, and traps the whole families in dangerous and low -level wages in generations.
Even after decades of service, employment safety for cleaning workers is excited. At the Karachi Water and Sewerage Corporation, the largest employer of sewerage workers in Sindh, only a portion of the employees holds permanent positions. The majority works without written agreements. The KWSC lastly made official appointments to sewerage workers in 2006, locally known as Condimon, since in 2006, since then, it has almost completely relied on the arrangements for the stop gap through ad hoc staff and daily wedgers. The situation has been photographed somewhere else: In Umerkot, a worker served for 18 years without regular services. Local governments and contractors exploit the weakness of uncertain labor. Financial exploitation is similar: 53 % of the cleaning workers earn less than the minimum wage. Even four out of five reports never get an overtime salary while punishing the poisonous drain shifts and the drainage.
The record of health and safety is just as serious. More than half of the cleaning workers reported that working -related diseases, including respiratory and skin diseases, have long been exposed to toxic waste. Most were forced to buy safety gloves and masks out of their pockets. Many people had nothing. In Islamabad, a worker lost a finger after puncturing his hand while collecting waste. These are not isolated events: between 2011 and 2023, at least 80 cleaning workers lost their lives of cleaning of sewers without safety or mechanized support.
Cleaning workers clean up that we remove. They are essential to health and urban life, yet they are considered as invisible and expense.
Discrimination extends to women who face a strong reality. For example, non -Muslim women in Karachi are impatiently pushed to toilets or clothing. Their Muslim counterparts are offered less derogatory. This intersection of gender, caste and religious prejudice already adds another layer of anger to the unfair system.
The root of this crisis is a failure to legally recognize caste discrimination. Article 25 of the Constitution promises equality, but does not go to caste in the name of a prohibited ground, leaving cleaning workers unsafe against methods that prevent them from openly alternative jobs. Provincial labor laws, scattered and contradictory, fail to extend proper reservations. Strong safety regulations and absence of surveillance mean that thousands of workers continue to endanger their lives every day, which violates basic human dignity.
This is not just a matter of labor rights. This is a test of Pakistan’s commitment to equality and justice. Labor and human rights experts in Pakistan are illegal to declare caste discrimination through constitutional reforms, guarantee written contracts and permanent jobs, enforce minimum wages and overtime laws, provide mechanisms such as providing safety and providing safety. There are equally important social efforts to challenge notoriety, change public comments and to harass specific work for minorities, rather than to identify cleanliness.
Cleaning workers clean up that we remove. They are essential to health and urban life, yet they are sometimes considered as invisible and expense. A nation cannot move forward while leading some of its citizens in terms of exploitation because of their own self or religion. Correction is not just necessary, it is necessary. Being a provincial subject after the 18th Amendment, it is the primary responsibility of the provincial lawmakers to work decisively through law, policies and public awareness, restoring dignity, ensuring safety and guaranteed equality for cleaning workers. In anything, there is a small amount of engagement in a system that pushes and endangers those who serve the nation and on the most dangerous fronts.
The author is a media development expert that has extensive experience in labor rights, governance and human rights advocacy. He has guided national and international plans on the welfare of the workers, democratic freedoms, and media innovation, and frequently writes on the issues of social justice, labor reforms and backward classes in Pakistan.
