KARACHI:
The Bombay High Court, last week, issued a landmark judgment affirming that the State bears the responsibility to provide compensation to the families of victims who die during manual scavenging, even when the sanitation workers are privately employed for the task.
The court clarified that while the State may seek to recover this compensation from the private parties responsible for the criminal negligence, the immediate duty to provide a compensation of Rs30 lakh to each bereaved family rests with the State. The court noted: “The continued existence of manual scavenging is a serious blot on a civilized society and reflects the collective failure to completely eradicate this inhuman and degrading practice.”
Pakistan, on the contrary, continues to operate at the most cruel and barbaric end of this spectrum. It continues to send hundreds of sanitation workers into raw sewage gutters. Twenty of them died only in the last six months. Most families receive either nothing or a negligible amount in compensation. Can I, as a concerned citizen, demand complete prohibition of manual scavenging and entry of workers into sewage gutters? Why must the process of change and reform not begin by improving the lives of the downtrodden rather than increasing the salaries and perks of the parliamentarians?
Naeem Sadiq
Karachi
