Date workers toil through rising heat in Sindh

In the searing heat of a Pakistani summer, date harvesters in Sindh are pushing through conditions that workers say are getting more dangerous every year. Per Dawn, laborers like Muhammad Idrees—who has worked the date harvest for over a decade—begin their shifts around two in the morning to escape the worst of the daytime heat. But as temperatures regularly climb into the low forties Celsius during the July harvest season, the heat soon catches up with them. Workers report frequent bouts of heat stroke, fainting, and fever. Idrees earns roughly four dollars a day for the grueling work of harvesting and boiling dates from the palm groves of Khairpur district, which produces more than half of Pakistan's dates and supports thousands of farmers and workers. Pakistan, the world's fifth-largest date producer, is among the countries globally most vulnerable to climate change, despite contributing less than one percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

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