SIX men died after inhaling poisonous gases while manually scavenging the gutters for raw sewage in Sargodha and Tando Muhammad Khan on June 11 and 12. The choking of gutters was caused by waste thrown by the people; people like you and me.

In fact, they did not die a natural death. They were killed by the absolute poverty, helplessness and slavery imposed upon them by people like you and me. They received neither the minimum wage, nor were they registered with any social security entity. They were discriminated against, demeaned, and deprived of their rights by people like you and me.

On the other hand, on the eve of Eidul Azha, a day of sacrifice, joy as well as generosity, we should have considered compassion for fellow human beings who die every day because of an insensitive, cruel and inhumane system intentionally designed by people like you and me.

We should joing hands to push the state and the government of Pakistan, which just raised the salary of its grade 17 to 22 officers, to freeze such benevolence, and, instead, divert these resources to pay legal wages to sanitation workers, manufacture needed suction machines, and issue directives that no Pakistani citizen should be made to enter a sewage gutter ever again. After all, the sanitation workers, too, are people like you and me. The government seems it hard to digest, but their lives matter, too.

Naeem Sadiq
Karachi

Published in Dawn, July 2nd, 2024