LAHORE: Pakistani sanitation workers, most of them non-Muslims, face discrimination and stigmatisation based on their work and caste, an Amnesty International report has revealed.
The report, ‘Cut Us Open and See That We Bleed Like Them’: Discrimination And Stigmatization Of Sanitation Workers In Pakistan, is based on data collected by Amnesty and the Centre for Law & Justice (CLJ) from six districts: Lahore, Bahawalpur, Karachi, Umerkot, Islamabad and Peshawar.
The researchers spoke to Christian, Hindu and Muslim workers to understand the impact of caste-based discrimination on sanitation workers, and their report highlights stigmatisation of the work because of its association with caste-designated occupations.
A majority of Christians in Pakistan today are converts from a caste historically assigned the task of cleaning, the report notes. Caste-based occupations such as scavenging and sweeping are associated with religious minorities in Pakistan, including “lower-caste” Christians and Hindus.
Amnesty report says hiring policies perpetuate caste distinctions; most workers earn below minimum wage, not protected by labour laws
This, in turn, has resulted in the designation of sanitation work, considered undesirable by wider Pakistani society, to non-Muslims from so-called “lower castes.”
The report quotes the National Commission for Human Rights (NCHR) that found in its 2022 report that 80pc of non-Muslim religious minorities are employed in the lowest grades for government jobs.
Women sanitation workers face “triple discrimination” at the intersection of religion, caste and gender. About half of the women included in the report reported workplace harassment.
Stigmatisation of work
Amnesty found that many workers who were part of the study experienced stigmatization, and they reported being called derogatory and insulting names. Many reported that they were not allowed to use the same dishes or eat in the same places as Muslims. Some participants stated that they regularly faced discrimination in public places.
The report pointed out that stigmatisation has also resulted in violence, particularly in the context of blasphemy allegations. The report notes that there have been several prominent cases of sanitation workers being accused of blasphemy, including Aasia Bibi.
In August 2023, a blasphemy accusation against two sanitation workers led to an arson and mob attack on more than 20 churches and 80 Christian neighbourhoods in Jaranwala.
Precarious work and no rights
The report mentions data collected by CLJ on nearly 300 government job advertisements from 2010 to March 2025, showing that the ads explicitly required applicants to be non-Muslim or so-called “lower castes” or gave preference to them as part of the job criteria.
This reinforces existing caste-based patterns of employment within sanitation work and ensures that so-called “lower caste” non-Muslims are pushed towards sanitation work.
In the analysis of data collected from five government agencies, Amnesty found Christians were disproportionately employed, not only in lower grades, but also specifically in sanitation positions.
The study also found that sanitation workers in Pakistan can be categorised into three main employment groups: permanent, contractual and daily wage and the government bodies across Pakistan avoided regularizing sanitation workers, denying them job security, benefits and legal protections.
Sanitation workers do not fall into the definition of worker under many laws, and if they do, these laws fail to cover temporary and daily-wage workers.
The study notes several practices by employers to maintain a non-permanent workforce. First, some employers hire sanitation workers on 89-day contracts to avoid legal obligations under the Industrial and Commercial Employment (Standing Orders) Ordinance that defines a permanent worker as someone who has completed a probationary period of three consecutive months.
Sanitation workers participating in the research were also found to be inadequately protected by social security and welfare schemes and they lacked awareness regarding social service and worker welfare schemes.
