• Demand comes after 26 deaths occurred in country over past eight months
• Cleaners are most marginalised, discriminated against section of society, rights activists say

KARACHI: Deeply grieved by the tragic deaths of two sanitation workers, who lost their lives while cleaning a sewer at the Kutchi Memon Jamaat building in Bhimpura on Sept 10, the Citizens Commission for Equality and Human Rights called a press conference at the Karachi Press Club on Thursday.

While educating about the tragedy, social activist and occupational health and safety expert Naeem Sadiq said that the sanitation workers had no safety precautions and that they were also discovered quite late. “As is the usual practice after such terrible incidents, the families of the poor deceased are silenced by giving them a few thousand rupees after making them sign a certificate that they shall not pursue any legal action,” he said.

“These deaths occurred in exactly the same manner and for exactly the same reason as the deaths that occur week after week in the sewage gutters of Pakistan. This is inhumane, undignified and dangerous work and we the citizens demand of the government to completely prohibit sanitation workers from entering gutters,” he added.

“Such deaths are the consequence of pure criminal negligence by the government. We in Pakistan want the government to pay five million rupees to each victim’s family,” said Sadiq.

“There have been 26 similar deaths in this country in the last eight months of which eight happened in Karachi while 18 were reported in Punjab,” Sadiq informed.

“And none of the men was a Muslim. Also, no one was directly employed by any government department. They were third-party contractual employees.”

On the occasion, Sadiq also shared that in neighbouring India, they were now giving a compensation of three-million-rupee to such deaths after orders from Indian courts.

“And even though this law was introduced in 2013, the compensation, given by the government only, is given to families of victims from the year 2000. It doesn’t matter if the deceased was employed by the government or not,” he said.

Advocate Sara Malkani said that one year ago, they had filed a petition following another such incident, which also included the death of sanitation workers, including a minor. “First one sanitation worker went in, then after he did not come out, his family members also went after him, one by one, also to reach the same fate. But sadly people forget such tragedies soon. It is a grave social injustice, which we are promoting by not speaking about it,” she pointed out.

Development professional Nikhat Sattar said that the machines which clean gutters had been imported by the government and were gathering rust as human beings were entering gutters to clean accumulated filthy waste with their bare hands as they inhaled toxic fumes.

“These sanitation workers have a life expectancy of 45 years,” she said.

“People say that cleaning gutters is the profession of these people. But society is not giving the people who do this work any other options. They are the most marginalised, discriminated section of society who are doing this work. They also belong to religious minorities,” she said, adding that this practice is avoidable.

“There is no need to do this work manually as there are machines to carry out the work,” she said.

The Joint Director of Urban Resource Centre, Zahid Farooq, said that he knew the victim community very well because he belonged to them. “I happen to live among them so I happen to know very well what is going on. They are socially not seen as human beings and are looked down upon,” he said. “We occasionally see job advertisements for sanitation workers in the newspapers where it is clearly stated that ‘only Christians and Hindus’ may apply. But people in our community are good for other jobs too. We also have doctors and engineers amidst us,” he said.

Finally, the citizens demanded that the federal government and all provinces must legislate complete prohibition of entry of workers into sewage gutters and that all gutter cleaning tasks be performed by machines. Also, any individual or organisation asking a person to enter a sewage gutter be charged for a cognizable offense for which the FIRs be filed by the state itself even where families sign any affidavit.

Lastly, the government must compensate all sanitation workers who died like this over the past five years by paying them five million rupees each in compensation.

Published in Dawn, September 25th, 2026