Abstract
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.
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Notes
Death rates among sanitation workers are pegged at about 9 per 1000 of the population as compared to 7 per 1000 among the general population (Salve & Jungari, 2020).
Accidents with contaminated needles and sharps result in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hepatitis B, and hepatitis C infections (European Agency for Safety and Health at Work & Brun, 2009a). In 2010, it was estimated that 33,800 HIV cases, 1.7 million hepatitis B, and 315,000 hepatitis C infections globally could be attributed to the unsafe use of or injuries arising from contaminated syringes in healthcare establishments (WHO, 2018).
Employees on fixed-term contracts are eligible for the same statutory benefits as permanent workers for the same work proportionate to their tenure, notwithstanding their tenure falls short of the minimum duration prescribed by the relevant labour law. While the onus of monitoring labour rights and welfare provisions falls on the principal employer, contract labour circumvents this provision to create ambiguity in responsibilities between the principal employer and the contractor.
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Monteiro, T.S. Visible Waste, Invisible Workers: Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic for Securing Healthcare Sanitation Workers’ Rights in India. J. Hum. Rights Soc. Work 8, 424–438 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41134-023-00277-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41134-023-00277-w