It is perhaps this proximity to waste, that has led to Saudi authorities and various other instruments in the Saudi system to mistake these workers and what they do, for what they are. The Pakistanis who collect trash, the Saudis assume are trash, to be disposed forgotten and eliminated.
Next week, on January 6, 2014 the Saudi Foreign Minister Prince, Saud Al Faisal is to arrive in Pakistan for a much awaited visit. According to news sources, he comes carrying a "very important message" from the Saudi King. While the hushed up secrecy and security surrounding the visit of the Saudi Prince means that none are quite sure regarding what this message might be, some solid guesses can be made regarding what the discussion agenda will not include. The following is a list:
a) The discussion will not raise any questions regarding the 700 Pakistanis who currently languish in Saudi jails, without access to legal assistance or to their families. The fact that several of these face the death penalty will not be enough to raise the issue to the importance of bilateral talks between the two countries. No mention will be made either of Jaafar Ghulam Ali or the unnamed Pakistani whose heads were cut off just this past November and January.
b) The discussion will not raise the issue of the labour/employment agreement currently being brokered between Saudi Arabia and six major labour exporting countries. The agreement, whose provisions would label all migrant workers who are not employed by large corporations as "domestic workers", is a venue through which countries can try and negotiate better rights for their workers.
c) The discussion will not raise the issue of dead Pakistani workers whose bodies languish for weeks in Saudi morgues before their families can arrange for money to get the bodies back home. Also unspoken will be the matter of the 59.000 living Pakistanis who have recently been banished from the Kingdom and sent home owing to recently imposed restrictions on migrant laborers.
With no beheadings, killings or deportations on the agenda, the meeting between the Prince and the Prime Minister is likely to go quite well. Undoubtedly, many pictures of flower adorned stages, and solemn nodding Saudis are likely to grace Pakistani television screens.
At the airports of Pakistan, the labourers will continue to line up, boarding planes for Saudi Arabia, offering up their bodies, to the building of the Saudi largesse, the driving of their cars, the drilling of their oil and of course, the collecting of their garbage.
Rafia Zakaria is a columnist for DAWN. She is a writer and PhD candidate in Political Philosophy whose work and views have been featured in the New York Times, Dissent the Progressive, Guernica, and on Al Jazeera English, the BBC, and National Public Radio. She is the author of Silence in Karachi, forthcoming from Beacon Press.
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