Pakistan’s “dirty job”
workers at high risk of Covid-19
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| A Pakistani Christian family in Karachi following an online prayer service during the Covid-19 lockdown (ANSA) |
In Pakistan, about 95% of the workers involved in cleaning
and sanitizing roads, hospitals, schools, sewers and public institutions belong
to religious minorities, mostly Christian and Hindu.
By Robin Gomes
According to International Christian Concern (ICC), a
non-governmental organization, Pakistan’s Christians fill between 80% to 90% of
the country’s sweeper and dirty jobs, including clearing sewers that involve
serious health hazards.
It says this percentage is an extreme over-representation as
Pakistani Christians make up less than 2% of the country’s overall population.
In many cases, says the Washington DC-based NGO,
advertisements for these dirty and hazardous jobs, considered the lowest and
filthiest, are reserved for non-Muslim applicants only.
Hence, descendants of lower-caste Hindus who converted to
Christianity centuries ago, still find themselves marginalized, relegated to
dirty jobs and grim fates.
According to the National Commission for Justice and Peace
(NCJP) of the Pakistan Catholic Bishops' Conference, "This is a double
standard and discriminatory treatment reserved for religious minorities".
These workers also collect contaminated waste in hospital
quarantine wards across the country and are almost always without any
protective equipment at work.
Supreme Court ruling
In a ruling on April 13, the Supreme Court of Pakistan noted
"the conditions of the staff involved in sanitation in hospitals and other
places" and ordered that they "receive the necessary
protection". However, the ground situation is a different story
altogether.
“We urge a quick response from the authorities to deal with
the situation,” Samuel Piyara, president of the Forum for the implementation of
minority rights, told the Vatican’s Fides news agency, referring to the Supreme
Court ruling.
Shahid Mushtaq Asi, president of the Union of Ecological
Operators said that authorities have not provided disinfectants and gloves to
these workers, none of whom have been tested for Covid-19. “The Supreme Court
verdict,” he lamented, “is not respected."
Fate of sewage workers and families
Municipalities across Pakistan rely heavily on Christian
cleaners to keep their sewers flowing.
In the country’s largest city Karachi, these cleaners keep
the sewer system flowing, using their bare hands to unclog crumbling drainpipes
of faeces, plastic bags and hazardous hospital refuse, part of the 1,750
million litres of waste the city’s 20 million residents generate
daily.
Many of them spend hours inside manholes. Almost all of them
develop skin diseases and respiratory problems because of constant contact with
the sludge, sewage and toxic fumes. For many, the job has been fatal.
Back home, they live in rundown, unhygienic neighbourhoods
without safe drinking water and schools.
While most doing the dirty job are illiterate, they have
been trying to give their children a better future by sending them to school.
But discrimination and lack of opportunities to compete with others force these
children to fall back on the jobs of their parents.
“I am very worried about them,” Father Saleh Diego, Vicar
General of the Archdiocese of Karachi and diocesan director of the National
Commission for Justice and Peace, told Asia News.
"We see them in the streets without masks or gloves.
They clean toilets, empty pits and septic tanks, clear sewers and manholes.”
“Sanitation workers,” he said, “are the most neglected and
marginalized group in our society.”
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