Risk, precarity, and necropolitics among informal waste workers in peri-urban Islamabad

Improving conditions requires formal recognition of informal collectors as a public health workforce, written contracts and social insurance, reliable PPE backed by practical training, routine vaccination and mobile health services, source segregation to reduce hazardous contact, and anti-stigma measures in communities and clinics. Without such changes, risk will continue to be shifted onto those with the least capacity to refuse it.