Call to give sanitation workers their due rights

LAHORE:A large number of sanitation workers play a key role in maintaining hygiene and quality sanitation services to the country but unfortunately there is no verifiable data available on the number of sanitation workers in Pakistan nor any record of their diseases or accidents is maintained.

Most of the sanitation workers are not educated or have a very basic schooling and hence not aware of their basic rights, or any legal protection or relief that they are entitled to as per national and international laws.

Pakistan Workers Federation (PWF) Secretary General Saad Ch expressed these views in press statement here on Friday. Saad Ch said that the departments in which the sanitation workers work usually invest in trainings of officers sitting in offices but they do not give any importance to imparting training to these sanitation workers on any related topics such as occupational safety and healthcare.

He said PWF has always given high priority to sanitation workers. Similarly, the PWF through support of ILO PRS Project funded by the government of Japan has been imparting training on Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) to sanitation workers in the provincial capital. ILO expert on Occupational Safety and Health Yoshi Kawakami imparted this training in 2022. Saad shared that the PWF organised another OSH training by Yoshi Kawakami in October 2023. 30 sanitation workers of LWMC and Wasa both male and female received this training. The most unique factor of these trainings were that unlike the other OSH trainings these were not only class based trainings but practical trainings where the workers were taken to their work places and through a check list they went through the gaps and risks which were involved in their work. He said the workers appreciated this training but the issues of sanitation workers related to their work could not be resolved without involving the administration of Wasa and LWMC in these trainings.

The PWF hopes that other organisations and even the employers themselves will also come forward to make these trainings available for their workers. Safety and wellbeing of the sanitation workers is not only a fundamental basic human right but also an integral part of the ILO conventions and national legislation, he added.