ISLAMABAD: Human rights activist Kapil Dev on Tuesday questioned why in Pakistan, sanitary workers jobs were allocated solely to Christians.
"I fail to understand as to why sanitary workers jobs are allocated for #Christians only? Why not for all? What if such jobs are for only Muslims in UK, USA or elsewhere in the West? You shit, and we clean. This should stop now. #EqualityForAll," Kapil Dev tweeted along with a picture of a recent advertisement by the Pakistan Army.
The Pakistan Army advertisement offering sanitation jobs for Christians recently drew criticism over social media for being discriminatory towards the community, reported Union of Catholic Asian News.
Run by several newspapers in Pakistan, the advertisement announced vacancies for the posts of drivers, sepoys, tradesmen and sanitation workers in the Army's Mujhahid Force. However, the sanitation jobs were specified for Christians only.
This triggered several minority rights activists, who later urged Pakistan Army to discard its discriminatory policy of recruiting only Christians for sanitation work.
"Honorable @OfficialDGISPR, Pak Christians have a great deal of love and respect for our armed forces. Even though a good number of Christians are working as janitors, tagging them with janitorial work badly reflects on us. We have high expectations from you. Kindly intervene!!!" Asiq Aqeel, a minority rights activist wrote on Twitter, tagging army chief spokesman Major General Asif Ghafoor.
Mary James Gill, a Christian political worker and a member of the opposition PML-N party, said, "Dear DG ISPR, this is not the 1st time such ads have appeared. As a Pakistani Christian I feel no shame in cleaning my country but this policy muds the image of #Pakistan being discriminatory against a religious minority. Please take notice. Christians are not just sweepers."
Gill further questioned why there cannot be quotas for Muslims to be employed as sweepers since Islam says cleanliness is half of faith, Union of Catholic Asian News reported.
The Pakistan Army has not commented on the advertisement.
Christians account for around 2.5 per cent of Pakistan's population of 220 million, according to the 2017 national census.
Union of Catholic Asian News states representation of Christians in menial cleaning jobs is extremely high.