ASIA: Extreme heat costs poorest workers their health and wages

If Shanti Devi misses work to care for her children, she loses out on a much-needed paycheck – Image: Danish Pandi/DW

When temperatures soar across cities in Asia, informal workers face a choice: risk their health or lose their income. For many, the effects don’t end when the workday is over.

Brijpal Singh spends long hours working construction under the blazing sun in Noida, a sprawling industrial satellite city in India’s National Capital Region. Even as temperatures soar past 45 degrees Celsius (113 Fahrenheit), work on the building site rarely stops.

By the end of each shift, the 51-year-old says his heart is pounding, and he’s usually dizzy, dehydrated and physically drained from hours in the heat. Yet taking a day off is a luxury he cannot afford.

Missing work would mean losing his daily wage of 500 to 600 rupees ($6 to $7, €5.20 to €6.10). The money supports his wife and three children living in a village in Uttar Pradesh, a two-day journey away .

“There are days when I don’t feel like working,” said Singh. “But if I miss a day, who will take care of my children and pay for their expenses?”

Some 5 million people work in the Delhi region’s informal economy, accounting for roughly 80% of the total workforce. And as climate change drives up temperatures, many paid by the day like Singh are faced with an impossible trade-off between providing for their families and protecting their health.

Even during baking heat waves, Brijpal Singh cannot afford to stop working on building sites, putting his health at risk – Image: Danish Pandit/DW

Asia: Extreme heat harms health, productivity and earnings

The past decade has been India’s warmest on record, bringing more frequent, intense, and prolonged heat waves. At the same time, heat is reducing productivity and increasing illnesses, with one study finding rising temperatures could be costing informal workers the equivalent of 2% of their country’s GDP annually. That’s nearly $80 billion (€69 billion).

“Wage losses are only going to worsen as temperatures continue to rise,” said Ameena Kidwai, lead researcher at People’s Courage International, a nonprofit aiming to strengthen informal workers’ rights. “Workers are now putting in many more hours than they did before to complete the same amount of work.”

The US-based organization surveyed informal workers in five Asian cities. Kidwai said some of those surveyed reported that tasks once completed in eight hours now take 10 to 12 hours during the hottest months, as they slow down to cope with dangerous conditions.

With heat becoming a major occupational hazard, workers described the harm to their health, ranging from respiratory and gastrointestinal illnesses to stroke and kidney disease.

“As a result, workers also have to spend more on over-the-counter medicines and visits to clinics or hospitals,” Kidwai said.

Asia: Out of the work frying pan and into the home furnace

A lack of ability to recover is a defining feature of urban heat for informal workers — from construction laborers and street vendors to delivery riders — say researchers.

Like Singh, many are migrants who leave their families behind to earn a living in fast-growing cities, said Patricia Samantha Narvaez, a program manager at the Philippine development organization IDEALS.

“You would expect home to be a place of relief,” said Narvaez. “But many live in densely packed neighborhoods with poor ventilation, little green space and heat-absorbing concrete.”

That’s the case for Singh, who returns to a single room with poor ventilation after work. During the hot months from April to June, it becomes a furnace, and frequent power cuts make it difficult to cool down before the next day’s shift.

“During the hot days, I can’t eat well,” Singh said. “I often drink oral rehydration solution and go to bed without eating.”

Narvaez surveyed informal workers in Quezon City for a report on the impacts of extreme heat. The city is just northeast of Manila, the capital of the Philippines, a country in which some 42% of the employed population are informal workers.

“Some participants described Quezon City as a ‘concrete jungle’ because even at night it remains unbearably hot,” said Narvaez.

Fifty-year-old Aida Tano has experienced such conditions firsthand. Tano worked in a garment factory in Quezon City for nearly two decades, where soaring temperatures, heat-generating machinery and poor ventilation turned the production floor into an oven. With no air conditioning, four workers shared one electric fan.

“There was no escape from the heat,” Tano said. “We complained, but management told us that if we couldn’t endure it, we could leave.”

Narvaez says it’s not unusual for factory owners to restrict measures that help workers cope with the heat even for trivial reasons such as not wanting fans to break down. At Tano’s workplace, she had to pay for her own drinking water, and even climbing stairs to leave on her break became too exhausting in the heat.

The factory has since closed, but after a long day in extreme heat, Tano, who now does odd jobs like sewing and cleaning, would come back to a house with no AC. She still relies on electric fans and keeping windows covered to block the sun, both of which do little to cool her home.

Working women bear the brunt of extreme heat

The economic impacts of climate change hit women hardest, largely because they account for a majority of the world’s poor, according to the United Nations.

Women in the informal economy also shoulder a disproportionately large burden because they combine paid work with unpaid caregiving responsibilities, said Ameena Kidwai of People’s Courage International.

“They’re managing their jobs while also running their households,” Kidwai said. “When children or older family members fall sick during a heat wave, the caregiving duties falls largely on women.”

Shanti Devi, a 36-year-old daily wage laborer in Noida, has been her family’s sole breadwinner since her husband was injured in a workplace accident several years ago.

After a day in relentless heat on a construction site, Singh tries to find relief in front of a fan – Image: Danish Pandit/DW

“Now I have to manage the house, care for my children and also try to earn a living,” said Devi.

During heat waves, school closures and a shift to online classes often force Devi to stay home with her four children instead of going to work. Each day of lost wages adds to the already struggling family’s financial strain.

“I took the day off because it is too hot to work, and my children are home because their school is closed for the summer,” Devi said. “I have to cook for them. When school is open, they eat their meals there.”

Frequent power outages and overheated homes, also leave many women up through the night caring for family members in the heat before returning to work the next day. Disrupted sleep and lack of rest come with increased health risks, such as heart disease and diabetes, meaning women are often more vulnerable than men in heat waves. 

Researchers say these overlapping pressures expose a gap in many cities’ efforts to adapt to a heating planet. While India has introduced heat action plans, and Quezon City is developing its own measures, protections for informal workers remain limited and unevenly enforced.

As temperatures rise because of human-caused climate change, experts say measures focus largely on short-term responses and often overlook the realities of informal workers’ lives.

“Climate change will only deepen existing inequalities because those with the fewest resources are often the most exposed to extreme heat,” Narvaez said. “Ultimately, resilient cities cannot be built on exhausted and unprotected workers.”