The Sindh High Court (SHC) on Saturday heard a plea regarding not providing safety kits to the sanitary workers and issued notices to the secretary local government, Karachi commissioner and others.
The plea said that many sanitary workers lost their lives due to the diseases through contaminated water. In 2017, many sanitary workers died due to gas in the manholes.
According to the content of the application, human waste in the sewerage line also contains needles, blades and broken glass pieces that harm sanitary workers. Nobody thinks that sanitary workers are also human. They are also ignored by society. They have no masks, no protected dresses and oxygen cylinders while performing the duty. Moreover, there are no proper arrangements for their training.
In other countries, sanitary workers are well equipped with protected dresses, audio and video facility, mirror screen, oxygen cylinders and other instruments when they start their working in the gutters and sewerage lines but in our country, there is no such facility available for sanitary workers. Sanitary workers in country should also be equipped with protective kits.
The plea requested the court to order the concerned authorities to provide all facilities to the sanitary workers.
The court sought reply from the all concerned authorities till March 25.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 26th, 2023.
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