LAHORE, Pakistan, May 1, 2020 (Morning Star News) – When a Christian sanitation worker died after a police car struck him last week in Gujranwala, Pakistan, officers compensated his impoverished family with the equivalent of US$620.
Rights advocates fear the Christian family likely will be forced to pardon the driver.
The case typifies the discrimination and dangers that street sweepers face in Pakistan, a country with a 96-percent Muslim population where only non-Muslims – mostly Christians – are hired to pick up garbage from the roads.
“The government announced the measly monetary compensation only after the Christians raised this issue on social media, otherwise this incident too would have been swept under the rug as always,” Mary James Gill, executive director of the Centre for Law and Justice, told Morning Star News. “It’s unfortunate that the government continues to ignore the plight of the Christian sanitation workers, who are doing their jobs on the roads with full commitment amid the coronavirus pandemic, and that too without any protective gear.”
Ashiq Masih, a 56-year-old Catholic working as a contract employee for the Gujranwala Municipal Corporation in Punjab Province, was picking up roadside garbage on April 24 when a police vehicle speeding the wrong way on a one-way street struck him at full force, critically injuring the father of three.
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