Ahmed Ali once came across an infant’s body wrapped in a plastic bag. The 36-year-old informed the police and then carried on working.
Another day, it was a gold-coloured bangle. “We don’t find riches,” he says, but that time he pocketed it.
His job as a sweeper in the megacity of Dhaka means he sees the Bangladeshi capital as few others do. He starts work in the early morning – about 2am-3am – when the streets are dark and quiet, and keeps going until 8am. Then he returns home, to an area called Sutrapur Bazar.
The walled compound is known as the “Sweeper Colony”: a place where 51 households live together, each family with one member or more employed as sweepers – a role that includes cleaning sewers as well as clearing rubbish and sweeping the roads.
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Many families reside in a single room and they all share a communal bathroom area.
The land was allocated to them by the authorities, so they don’t pay rent. No one else wants to live with them, they say.
Dhaka could become the most populous city in the world by 2050, according to a recent United Nations report.
It already has close to 37 million residents, the report says, with other estimates suggesting that as many as 400,000 new residents move to the city each year.
A significant number are fleeing weather and climate-related incidents, which are predicted by experts to continue increasing in intensity and frequency. Bangladesh – with its low and flat land – is considered by climate scientists as one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change in the world.
As the city’s population expands, thousands of sweepers are under pressure to keep it clean and liveable. Yet the job they do is largely unappreciated.
Ali is a father of four: his children are aged between 18 months and 18 years. His eldest daughter loves education, he says, though he believes neither this nor her looks will matter when it comes to marriage, “because when we try to arrange a marriage, when they know about [my job] sweeping, they cancel it.”
He is planning to bring her to a rural village to find a husband: a place where no one knows his profession. He would also like to send her to university “if she wants to [attend], but [only] if I can bear the cost.”
[ Sally Hayden: Bangladesh health system cracks under weight of climate changeOpens in new window ]
Ali doesn’t want his offspring to become sweepers like him and many of their relatives. “My mother and father-in-law, their life is totally gone, I don’t want the same for my children,” he says.
Ali’s mother-in-law, Amela Begum (60), has been a sweeper since 1983; her two sisters are sweepers too. “It’s better to do something rather than stay alone in the house,” Begum says.
Her husband Mustafa (70) was a sweeper before he retired and his son inherited his job – traditionally a common arrangement because the elderly are forced to retire at 69 and receive no pension. But Mustafa still helps his wife with her daily labour.
Close to the Sweeper Colony is an apartment block the city corporation provided to house 170 people involved in sweeping work. Those randomly chosen to reside there pay no rent, but contribute 5,000 taka a month (€34.75) towards utilities, which some say is still a struggle.
Young sweepers earn about 17,000 taka (€120) a month, which can go up to about 30,000 taka (€211) before retirement, they say. It is not unheard of for Bangladeshis to register their official birth year as one or two years younger – it means if they get a government job they can stay in it for longer.
Some have permanent positions while others are less guaranteed. The sweepers have a union, which they say was established around the 1980s. Every month each person contributes 200 taka (€1.39) which helps when there are deaths or accidents.
Recently sweepers in this part of the city have been protesting, saying their benefits are being reduced.
Their job has also become more dangerous, with random arson attacks carried out amid political unrest, following the ousting of long-time prime minister Sheikh Hasina in 2024 in protests known as the Monsoon Revolution.
These began over anger around a quota system for government jobs. The night we met, two garbage trucks had been set on fire, though no one was injured.
Many are hoping for stability following last week’s elections which were won by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, but it is far from certain.
Mohammed Habib (53) has been working as a sweeper since 1988. He remembers when the road he was working on was a “water way” crossed with “tiny bridges”. Now there are a lot more people and, consequently, a lot more garbage.
“We don’t have enough manpower. If there was more it would be better ... The thing we’re doing is very important but we never get this kind of respect. We want people to know this job is important,” he says.
“People shame us, they call us bad names ... people throw garbage in not designated areas and then try to beat us up if we tell them.”
A grandfather now, he put his children in faraway schools so no one stigmatised them – though none of the three finished high school. Now, his son is a driver and his daughters are housewives.
He works every day, receiving 24,000 taka (€169) for months with 30 days and 24,900 (€175) for months with 31.
“We are illiterate so we don’t have another kind of thing to do,” says Kulsum Begum (39), who has been in the job for 25 years; her husband, standing beside her, has spent a decade longer as a sweeper. She finds working through the night peaceful: it’s better to have no one around rather than people who insult them.
She wades through cigarette boxes, crisp packets, syringes, worn-out shoes, surgical masks and fruit rinds, which will all be piled up and taken to a landfill.
Supervisor Jahidul Islam (28) is employed by the city corporation to watch over 78 people, including about 37 women. He says another 30 were let go when the government introduced “smart cards” a few years back and it was discovered that their names were registered under the wrong spelling decades ago (an easy mistake when many are illiterate), or that their age was incorrect.
He says jobs used to be passed down between parents and children, but this is no longer happening, causing the sweepers to protest.
The sweepers face a range of other problems, he adds, including women having nowhere to go to the toilet and a range of health issues, worsened by a lack of protective equipment. All of those I saw were wearing sandals and flip-flops, with no gloves.
Many face what Islam calls “allergy problems”, and other health issues, including the risk of getting typhoid. When they pull up slabs to clear drains they can injure their hands. Yet they don’t officially get paid for sick days, though often they will cover for each other to avoid the absence being recorded.
When there is flooding in Dhaka, the sweepers sometimes need to dive as deep as 1.8m to 2.4m. Without proper equipment they are “just washed away”, Islam said. He never forces anyone to do this and tries to hire divers instead, or “arrange sucking mechanisms”.
There has been some outside assistance. Between 2020 and 2025, Jonash Clery Costa, an area programme manager with World Vision Bangladesh, says his organisation supported more than 1,400 sweepers with protective gear, including hand gloves, cloth masks, wellington boots and raincoats.
This investment was important because “air pollution and poor waste management are critical issues in Dhaka caused by dust, smoke, and unplanned urbanisation,” he says.
“The sweepers and cleaners are the frontline force in keeping the city clean and ensuring a healthy environment.”
– Raahat Alam assisted with this report
– This report was supported by the Simon Cumbers Media Fund
