They endure hell for $3 a day!

As plumes of dark black smoke rise from the tall chimneys of a brick factory, workers at the plant in Sheikhupura, Pakistan, stand atop massive kilns, breaking up coal blocks and shoveling them into specialized furnaces beneath their feet, generating the heat essential to the industry that defines the city.

But the situation has grown even more difficult, as summers have become hotter due to climate change in a country already accustomed to temperatures exceeding 40 degrees Celsius.

Worker Obaid Hussain, 35, clad in clothes blackened by soot, told Agence France-Presse in an interview published today that working conditions have forced laborers into a sort of siege, trapped between the heat from the furnaces below and the sweltering weather above. He added, “There is no doubt that the heat is extremely intense, but when you think about the financial pressures at home, you have no choice but to keep working.”

Pakistan’s construction sector is experiencing a boom, driving up demand for labor in the brick-making industry, where workers earn around $3 a day.

Saida Ghulam Fatima, Secretary General of the Bonded Labour Liberation Front in Pakistan, described these brick kilns as “places of detention,” explaining that “workers endure merciless heat from the blazing sun above their heads, while intense heat rises from the kiln itself beneath them.”

Fatima noted that workers remain trapped in a vicious cycle of financial debt pressures, extreme heat, and deteriorating health conditions, emphasizing that rising global temperatures exacerbate these risks.

Nationally, more than one million people work in over 18,000 brick kilns, according to 2018 data cited in a report by the Climate and Clean Air Coalition.