In India, the implementation of the Bio-medical Waste Management Rules (2016) by the Government of India, notwithstanding, the safe handling, segregation, treatment, and disposal of biomedical waste have remained below acceptable global standards. India produced more than 150–200 metric tonnes of COVID-19–related biomedical waste per day during the peaks of the pandemic in 2020 and 2021 respectively. Healthcare sanitation workers, predominantly contracted from among socioeconomically, culturally, and politically marginalised Scheduled Castes and Other Backward Classes, experienced a heightened risk of hospital-acquired infections and injuries in the absence of adequate provisions of personal protective equipment and sanitation supplies. As a marginalised workforce, they continued to remain on the fringes of labour welfare legislation and occupational safety and health policies despite their enhanced risk profiles and close contact with infected waste. This paper undertook a critical analysis of the public health and safety policies, labour legislations, and human rights instruments signed by the Government of India vis-à-vis their applicability to healthcare sanitation work to assess the human and labour rights violations of this essential workforce. As the World Health Organization (WHO) officially declared COVID-19 no longer a ‘public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC)’ in May 2023, lessons on the essentiality of these occupations for public health, the systemic casteist and gendered exclusion of the workers from labour welfare, and their consequent invisibilisation in labour legislation and occupational health and safety policies are analysed to evaluate the role and scope of social work practice to safeguard and foreground their human rights and welfare.

尽管印度政府实施了《生物医学废物管理规则》（2016 年），但生物医学废物的安全处理、隔离、处理和处置仍低于可接受的全球标准。在 2020 年和 2021 年疫情高峰期间，印度每天分别产生超过 150-200 吨与 COVID-19 相关的生物医学废物。医疗卫生工作者主要来自社会经济、文化和政治上边缘化的在册种姓和其他落后阶层，在缺乏足够的个人防护设备和卫生用品的情况下，医院获得性感染和受伤的风险更高。作为边缘化的劳动力，尽管他们的风险状况有所提高并且与受感染的废物密切接触，但他们仍然处于劳动福利立法和职业安全与健康政策的边缘。本文对印度政府签署的公共卫生和安全政策、劳动立法和人权文书及其在医疗卫生工作中的适用性进行了批判性分析，以评估这一重要劳动力的人权和劳工权利受到侵犯的情况。随着世界卫生组织 (WHO) 于 2023 年 5 月正式宣布 COVID-19 不再是“国际关注的突发公共卫生事件 (PHEIC)”，有关这些职业对公共卫生的重要性、系统性种姓歧视和性别排斥的教训分析了来自劳动福利的工人以及他们随后在劳动立法和职业健康与安全政策中的隐身情况，以评估社会工作实践在保障和突出他们的人权和福利方面的作用和范围。