Deviance Assignment
Rafay Tiwana 251693994
Article published by Dawn 19th December 2023.
Non-payment of salaries: Heaps of garbage in Faisalabad as sanitary workers go on strike - Pakistan -
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Paragraph 1:
From reading this article I immediately found out multiple deviance incidents. The first one was
that the government, which is in place to assure basic necessities are provided, was not doing
its moral and constitutional job but was deviating from it. Its task is to pay its employees on
time, but it was not doing it. The second deviance I observed was that the sanitary workers did
the opposite of their duties by piling all garbage in streets and in front of governmental offices.
According to my understanding of Law, the government should not delay the payment of
employees in any case as it is unlawful as well as unethical as the workers are not being
compensated for their work.
Paragraph 2:
This deviance involves the government which already has a bad reputation due to these very
reasons as they are frequently involved in cases where they are the deviants. This case had the
community and the employees as the affectees. The community suffered as the garbage was
piled up in their streets which made it unhygienic and polluted whereas the sanitary workers
bore the cost of this deviance as they were not paid on time and had to prepare for Christmas
while they weren't even paid on time for the past Eid-ul-Azha which has made it difficult to
budget their lives.
Paragraph 3:
A Sociologist will critically analyze this situation and will be able to relate it with the theory of
Symbolic Interactions. The reason being that its emphasis is on how people understand and
give meaning to their social surroundings. The government conveys the idea that sanitary
workers' labour is unimportant and undervalued when it fails to pay them on schedule. The
workers' view of their place in society is impacted by this betrayal of trust and commitment,
which could lower morale and motivation. The sanitary workers will be victims of deviance and
the trust between the government and employees will be weakened as the government is not
following laws which makes the employees to not care about laws either. This deviance will set
a wrong reputation.