Health, Safety, and Dignity of Sanitation Workers: Labour Protection and Social Justice Perspectives

Abstract

The sanitation sector in the modern, urbanized world, lacking competitiveness, accountability, and development, constitutes a tragic abomination perpetrated in the informal economy, despite a record of acknowledgements, accreditations, and access to basic labor protection and rights. The devoted work of sanitation workers remains invisible, unquantified, neglected, and ostracized due to the social stigma, discrimination, and caste-based inequalities, despite their outstanding contributions in facing innumerable challenges to protect public health and safety. To understand the plight of sanitation workers, this situational analysis examines current trends and social welfare policies to protect them from health hazards and occupational risks, thereby promoting well-being. The main aim of this article is to evaluate the psychosocial support through rehabilitation by exploring the critical human rights issues at the grassroots levels that lead to recommendations of suitable legal and legislative frameworks and policy recommendations by identifying the structural barriers to achieving actions by eliminating systematic inequalities. The recommendations of Rehabilitation measures, Welfare Schemes, and Social Work interventions facilitate a platform for the sanitation workers to voice out their concerns on emerging safety needs in day-to-day practices. Through an expanding scoping review, the study captures the crux of some of the intolerable, ordeal, traumatic experiences at the workplace, Health Hazards and Occupational Risks in Sewerage and Septic Tank Workers that are alarming to capture the attention of policy makers to advocate for a structural and functional transformation to protect the wellbeing and promote a legacy among the sanitation workers towards social equity. The study attempts to present illustrations that propose good practices, approaches, policies, standards, and regulations aimed at improving the working conditions of sanitation workers concomitantly improving the quality of life by spotlighting on the government initiative to address the systemic gaps in implementation that calls for a collective action through collaboration at various levels to overcome the vulnerabilities, insecurities and uncertainty adds a significance to the review to cope with the precarity and adhere to assessment on protective measures such as vaccinations, health check up’s and health insurance. The scope of the study lies in building a strong evidence base that bridges the gap between sanitation infrastructure and the provision of sanitation services to ensure employee protection.