Porter Welfare
Trekking Guidelines
(as recommended by the International Porter Protection Group):
1.Clothing appropriate to season and altitude must be provided to porters for protection from cold, rain and snow. This may mean: windproof jacket and trousers, fleece jacket, long johns, suitable footwear (leather boots in snow), socks, hat, gloves and sunglasses.
2.Above the tree line porters should have a dedicated shelter, either a room in a lodge or a tent (the trekkers' mess tent is no good as it is not available till late evening), a sleeping pad and a blanket (or sleeping bag). They should be provided with food and warm drinks, or cooking equipment and fuel.
3.Porters should be provided with the same standard of medical care as you would expect for yourself, and life insurance.
4.Porters should not be paid off because of illness/injury without the leader or the trekkers assessing their condition carefully. The person in charge of the porters (sirdar) must let their trek leader or the trekkers know if a sick porter is about to be paid off. Failure to do this has resulted in many deaths. Sick/injured porters should never be sent down alone, but with someone who speaks their language and understands their problem, along with a letter describing their complaint. Sufficient funds should be provided to cover cost of rescue and treatment.
5.No porter should be asked to carry a load that is too heavy for their physical abilities (maximum: 20 kg on Kilimanjaro, 25 kg in Peru and Pakistan, 30 kg in Nepal). Weight limits may need to be adjusted for altitude, trail and weather conditions; experience is needed to make this decision.
Questions to ask trekking companies:
1. Does the company you are thinking of trekking with follow IPPG's five guidelines on porter safety?
2. What is their policy on equipment and health care for porters?
3. What do they do to ensure the trekking staff is properly trained to look after porters' welfare?
4. What is their policy on training and monitoring porter care by its ground operator in Nepal?
5. Do they ask about treatment of porters in their post trek questionnaire to clients?
More on how to treat your porters on the IMEC website.
ARE YOU GOING TREKKING THIS YEAR?
READ THIS PAGE BEFORE YOU GO TO MAKE SURE YOUR ADVENTURE OF A LIFETIME IS ENJOYED BY EVERYONE, INCLUDING YOUR PORTERS
In mountain regions all over the world, thousands of men and women and in some desperate cases, even children, are working as trekking porters. They carry extraordinary loads up and down mountain trails, often very ill equipped with insufficient clothing or footwear for just a very small wage.
Fact. More porters suffer from accidents and altitude sickness than western trekkers. Fact. Every year porters die unnecessarily on the job. Fact. Many are affected so badly by frost bite or snow blindness that they are unable to work again and unable to support their families.
Whether its Nepal, Pakistan, Tanzania, Peru or any other trekking destination, the problems faced by trekking porters share are the same:
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• Inadequate wages
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• Being forced to carry excessive loads
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• A lack of appropriate clothing and footwear
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• A lack of appropriate safety equipment such as sunglasses
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• A lack of appropriate food
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• A lack of overnight shelter
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• A lack of medical care
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• A lack of insurance
Porters are often considered among the lowest social positions within the community and too frequently are exploited by their employers who pay poor wages and do nothing to improve the working conditions.
So is the answer to avoid using porters on your trek? No. If you act responsibly and choose an ethical company, employing porters is a very good way to assist some of the world’s poorest communities and create jobs for meagre subsistence farmers to supplement their income so the more porters you can employ the better!
Despite their hard graft, you’ll discover that the grace and enthusiasm of your porters will add a wonderful dimension to your trek.