The Lahore Waste Management Company (LWMC) is a government-owned entity established under the Companies Ordinance/Act in 2010. Recently, the Local Government and Community Development Department updated the company's status, renaming it the Lahore Suthera Punjab Agency under the Suthera Punjab Authority Act of 2026. Since the inception of the LWMC, numerous experiments and technological interventions have been conducted to ensure transparent attendance and real-time field presence of sanitary workers. Currently, over 20,000 sanitary workers, including helpers and drivers, are deployed across the city to carry out essential cleanliness operations, such as street sweeping, waste collection, and transportation of refuse to designated points.
The LWMC first introduced a biometric attendance system in Lahore in 2013. However, this initiative failed because the nature of sanitary work — involving dust, moisture, and physical labor — often made workers’ thumb impressions unreadable by biometric devices. Consequently, the attendance records were incomplete and unreliable. In 2014, the sector introduced an Android-based attendance mechanism. The LWMC purchased 700 Android phones, installed an in-house built Android application on each device, and handed them to the concerned supervisor of every union council. Despite these efforts, the system faced significant technical and operational issues, including application glitches, poor connectivity, and inconsistent usage, which persisted until 2021.
Parallel to the Android attendance system, in 2017, management attempted to provide a GPS ribbon to each worker to track their field presence in real time. However, this idea did not mature due to two major obstacles: concerns regarding human rights and employee privacy, and strong pressure from labor unions, which argued that continuous GPS tracking amounted to surveillance and mistrust of workers. Consequently, the proposal was abandoned. In 2019, the LWMC launched a pilot project in 10 union councils using retina verification technology to mark worker attendance. Unfortunately, workers resisted this method as well, complaining that eye scanning twice a day caused eye strain and potentially damaged their eyesight. Considering these health concerns, the management decided to close the pilot project entirely.
In 2022, the city introduced Machine Learning (ML) techniques by involving academic institutions to identify ambiguities and anomalies in worker attendance records. This academic collaboration raised serious questions about the reliability and performance of the in-house designed Android attendance application that had been in use for years. Subsequently, Lahore’s waste sector hired the Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB), a reputable public sector technology organization. Currently, PITB is fully responsible for geotagged attendance handling and direct upload at the central LWMC server. Nevertheless, attendance in the field is still marked manually by designated checkers or supervisors using a PITB-designed Android application and devices.
The core dilemma is that LWMC's Human Resource (HR) Department has also deployed a separate pool of 150 recently hired internal checkers and supervisors. Each receives a monthly salary of PKR 70,000 and is entitled to 30 liters of fuel per month. These checkers are assigned daily to verify the presence and visibility of workers in their respective beats by cross-checking against the attendance marked in the system. However, despite these dual-layered efforts — technological through PITB and human through internal checkers — there remains a pressing need to enhance the capacity of concerned supervisors, checkers, or daroghas. Most attendance checkers and supervisors belong to the sanitary worker category, meaning they have limited formal education and technical training, yet they are tasked with marking attendance on Android applications. To address this, Lahore's waste sector provided 1,700 new attendance devices to all checkers in late 2025. However, according to reports, some checkers have been allocated two attendance devices for the same attendance point within a union council — with each device assigned to a different worker. Unfortunately, most checkers are not matriculated, and whenever attendance is not successfully marked in the system for any reason, they routinely shift the blame to poor internet quality, regardless of the actual cause.
Attendance is enforced twice daily for the first shift: at 4:00 – 5:30 AM and again at 12:30 – 1:30 PM. If workers successfully mark both in-time and out-time, their full daily salary is calculated. However, if a worker misses either the in or out attendance for any reason — even due to technical issues or genuine field constraints — the system automatically deducts half a day’s salary, regardless of whether the worker was physically present in the field throughout the day. This rigid policy has caused significant financial hardship and low morale among the sanitary workers.
Sources reveal the attendance system is not fully automatic as claimed. Around five IT supervisors at LWMC's head office manipulate records — marking absent workers as present for kickbacks from zonal officers — all without senior management's knowledge. In each union council, three to five absent workers still receive full monthly salaries. This has sparked outrage among honest sanitary workers who report to the field daily. Meanwhile, PKR 8,000 to 15,000 is being deducted from regular workers' pay without any evidence or justification. According to Sweeper Union leaders Mr. Pervez Labha (Senior Naib Sadar) and Mr. Tariq Sadiq (Chairman), these deductions are baseless. Test cases should include Ravi Town's union councils 34, 37, 38, and 39, along with the second shift of Samanabad Town, where workers received less than half their salary for May 2026. According to a senior operational head, interference in field operations is very common. Additional operational managers are often deployed on verbal direction, even in the presence of already authorized managers. This creates overlapping responsibilities, with no clear accountability fixed for any individual.
An effective attendance improvement mechanism for workers must go beyond punitive deductions and unreliable technology. Instead of relying solely on low-educated supervisors using Android phones with poor internet, the system should integrate hybrid solutions: GPS-enabled checkpoints at designated attendance points, offline-compatible attendance apps that sync when connectivity returns, and daily supervisory spot checks using simple barcode or QR code scanning on worker ID cards. Crucially, any attendance system must include a grievance redressal mechanism, where workers can appeal to half-day deductions with field verification. Immediately recall all duplicate attendance devices. Limit internal attendance modification rights to no more than two senior officials. Maintain a tamper-proof digital audit log recording every change, including who made it, when, and why. Decentralized attendance system option should also be explored at tehsil or town level for efficient attendance management. There is also a need to publish a union council-wise summary of attendance versus field verification each month to make the system more transparent to labor union and public.
Sanitary workers occupy the lowest tier of LWMC’s organizational management hierarchy, yet they are the most critical resource responsible for delivering essential cleanliness services, including street sweeping, door-to-door waste collection, waste haulage into vehicles and containers, and sludge removal from drains. This workforce is largely uneducated and predominantly belongs to the Christian minority community in Pakistan. Currently, they are classified under the unskilled category and paid minimum wages of PKR 40,000 (approximately USD 142) per month. This amount is insufficient to meet rising daily expenses, including food, house rent, travel, utility bills, children’s education, and basic entertainment. Moreover, waste handling operations such as manual sweeping, lifting heavy waste loads, and desilting open drains and manholes — expose workers to significant musculoskeletal injuries, chronic back pain, and respiratory, skin and eye irritating issues.
The absence of proper uniforms and personal protective equipment (PPE) further exacerbates these dangers. Despite these occupational hazards, their work remains unrecognized as skilled labor. To make matters worse, sanitary workers are forced to buy their own brooms which is a basic tool manual street sweeping — out of their already depleted monthly wages. Therefore, the government should formally recognize waste handling as a ‘skilled category’ and introduce a ‘special cleanliness allowance quota’ for sanitary workers of approximately PKR 60,000 per month.
Combined with skilled category wages, this would enhance their total monthly salary to PKR 90,000–120,000 (USD 320–428). Such an increase would not only improve their living standards but also boost worker motivation, reduce turnover (escape from duty for another job to meet daily expense), and enhance the overall efficiency of Lahore’s waste management system.