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.

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 nonMuslim 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` nonMuslims 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 work-ers 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.

Minimum wage and laws The minimum wage in 2024 was set at Rs37,000 per month in most of the country and at the time of the field research, it was Rs32,000 per month. Almost half of those workers who were part of the researchreceived salaries below the minimum wage, while a majority of those who received minimum wage were men.

`Workers across all districts reported that their salaries were insufficient to cover their basic needs.` Besides the sanitation workers were found regularly subject to unsafe, and sometimes hazardous, working conditions. Sanitation workers participating in the study seldom received personal protective equipment or training in occupational safety and health.

In its recommendations, Amnesty International calls for action to address the issues of caste-based discrimination faced by the sanitation workers.

It asks the government and relevant authorities to eliminate the manual cleaning of drains and gutters and instead use machinery; amend the Constitution to include protection against caste-based discrimination as a part of the fundamental rights chapter; pass law recognising caste-based discrimination as per Pakistan`s international human rights obligations to address; define caste in the laws; end discriminatory recruitment practices, including discriminatory job advertisements, for sanitation work; amend labour laws to ensure safety; and end discrimination that sanitation workers face and regularise sanitation workers.