Workshop: Risking everything for your safety and protection: sanitation workers on the frontline
During the WASH and COVID-19 Pandemic Virtual Symposium, SNV and partners convened a workshop on COVID-19 and sanitation workers on the frontline.
Whilst sanitation workers are considered essential to achieve WASH SDG targets, their working and living conditions are seldom discussed in WASH decision-making and planning spaces. Many sanitation workers toil daily without personal protective equipment. Few enjoy job security and have access to preventative and remedial health care and social protection. They have been vulnerable then, and more intensely now, as they cope with the challenges of COVID-19.
Similar to health practitioners, the pandemic has shown to the world the importance of sanitation workers as frontline professionals. The health and proper functioning of societies rest on their backs. During this workshop, panelists will share: practical government-led experiences and learning from different (Asian) countries in supporting and motivating sanitation workers to deliver services in the face of the pandemic, and recommendations to minimise the occupational health and risks taken by sanitation workers so that societies take better care of the workers that take care of them, and that societies are better prepared for future emergencies.
