The Azam Cloth Market is an enclosed space where sanitation workers interact constantly with sections of society, including Chowkidars, labourers, shopkeepers, scavengers.

They have their android-based attendance taken at 6am when the market is very quiet and still. Moring light filters through the metal sheets used as shades in front of the shops of the market, dimming its passages.

Fayyaz is one of the first sanitation workers in the cloth market. When this writer went to see him, he was sweeping a pitch black alley, making his presence audible with movement of his broom before but he was not in sight. It was just the sound of his broom scraping against the brick ground, papers, plastic and glass being shifted around and his footsteps moving with the waste. Eventually, a small cloud of dust started to creep out of the alley with shut shops. His Darogha, a stout, middle-aged man, called out to Fayyaz who, dressed in a pair of slacks that fell below his waste and a fitted shirt that made his wiry firm frame noticeable, emerged out of the opaque alley.

Fayyaz walked upright with a casualness that gave no signs of urgency. His gait was quite in contrast with his Darogha’s who, under pressure to clear the market before the shopkeepers arrived, was perpetually on the move.

Fayyaz is in about 30 and his hair is turning grey even at this age. His parents used to do the sanitation work in the market while his grandfather was also a sanitation worker though in a different area of the Walled City. Thus, sanitation is his hereditary work. He was raised near Rairda Chowk in Christian Mohallah where his grandfather owned a considerable amount of property. He said his grandfather lost much of his property in gambling and drinking. Both of the parents of Fayyaz died of kidney failure and their deaths drastically changed his life.

Everything changed when his father passed away. He was in 8th grade, stopped going to school and started helping his mother on her “beat.” His whole family started to disintegrate around that time. His sister got married and his brother shifted residences. Both of his parents were permanent (Pakka) employees as opposed to work-charge (Katcha) ones. Upon their retirement, their position was to be given over to Fayyaz and his brother, if they wanted them. He was too young at the time of his father’s death to take the job. His father’s death marked a rupture in his life, from an adolescence that was unconcerned with finances to a premature adulthood that was consumed by them.

A few years later, his mother took early retirement for medical reasons as she was suffering from the same kidney problem that consumed his father. Fayyaz did not know why he was not given her Pakka (permanent) position and was taken in as a work-charge worker, meaning he would receive no raises, pension or other benefits. Soon his mother also passed away. Her illness and death created another rupture in life of Fayyaz who had to bear the cost of her treatment and funeral service. Though it is assumed that Pakistanis, especially the poor, have extensive kinship networks to rely on for financial support, this appears to no longer be the case, if it ever was.

Fayyaz was alone in taking care of his life and mother’s when she was ill. He depended on loans over the course of her treatment, death and funeral. He also sold off the family home to help allay these costs and had to take Rs150,000 loan from a company. He now lives with his wife and two children in a rented house in the Misri Shah area and continues to pay off his debt, slowly but in regular payments.

For the past several months, he, as well as other sanitation workers, had had their salaries reduced because of android-based attendance. In fact, sanitation workers, their union, and Lahore Waste Management Company (LWMC) officials have been at daggers drawn over the issue as the workers think that technology was flawed and faulty while the company blames them for absence from job. Fayyaz complains that his salary is reduced every month due to the android-based attendance. It makes no sense to him as he shows up to work yet his salary is continuously reduced. He goes on taking loan from wherever he can; a trusting friend or a benevolent shopkeeper but never a relative.

Fayyaz and other sanitation workers can find part-time work, either in a mosque or a household or collect recyclables to sell, thereby supplementing their income. But they always face financial hardships as their income is always meager and most of the times they have to take load to fulfill their needs just as Fayyaz did during his mother’s illness and death.

Their labour takes a heavy toll on their bodies and they contract diseases like Fayyaz parents contracted lung disease due to constant dust that they inhale while sweeping streets and roads.

Lives of many sanitation workers, like Fayyaz, are precarious and this precariousness is a constant feature of their lives. The precariousness extends to others in the family who depend on them and it forces them to take debt with a considerable interest. Put simply, the current sanitation system in Lahore reproduces a cycle of labour, debt and illness in which the lives of sanitation workers are wasted.

Published in Dawn, November 2nd, 2014