KARACHI: If you watch Aisha Gazdar’s moving documentary Yeh haath salamat hain jab tak, chances are that you would stop eating prawns. The pittance that the women and children, who shell shrimps get for their back-breaking job and the health hazards that they face, is absolutely shocking. But then this is not the only job where women (and also children) are exploited. Take the example of the incense-stick (agarbatti) making job, which women, young and not so young, do at home, all that these workers get is simply peanuts. The skin of their fingers, which touch harmful chemicals, begins to decay. If you compare the price at which a popular brand of an incense-stick is sold with what they give to these workers then you would perhaps decide never to use that brand. Mind you, the price in the local market is no where near the amount at which they are sold abroad.
Carpet-making is yet another such business where everything from the back-breaking posture that the women and children have to adopt when working and the wool particles that they can’t help inhaling is simply alarming. The remunerations that they get in return can only be described as chicken feed.
Women, who form 19 per cent of our workforce, are exploited endlessly in factories, farms and by contractors who pay them on the basis of the quantum of work completed. The payment scale also shows gender-bias: women are paid less for doing the same job that their male counterparts do. Sadly, the monetary compensation is not based on performance.
Then there is sexual harassment which is unaccounted for. It is generally brushed under the carpet. Those who don’t ‘oblige’ their masters are penalised in many ways. As if harassment at the workplace wasn’t enough, women who take public transport have to bear the psychological, at times even physical, harassment.
Aisha Gazdar, socially conscious like her mother writer Saeeda Gazdar and father the late Mushtaq Gazdar, has made a soul-stirring documentary, very much in the style of the man from whom she has inherited her sense of integrity and the courage to stand up for the downtrodden. She laments that the women employed in factories are generally given a raw deal, but what pains her most is that those in the unorganised sector suffer much more.
The documentary produced and screened by PILER (the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research) at a local hotel was followed by a question-answer session. The filmmaker had to leave for Malaysia a day earlier but Saba Khattak, who was until recently with the SDPI (Sustainable Development Policy Institute), gave a thought-provoking talk on the subject.
She pointed out how the illegal immigrants are the ones who suffer more. For instance Burmese women, who don’t venture out for fear of getting caught by the police for illegal stay in this country, are given extremely poor payments, often very late and sometimes not at all. They are generally given the hazardous job of making incense sticks. Their Bangladeshi sisters are not much better off. In fact illegal immigrants have their back against the wall the world over. And as Karamat Ali, Executive Director of PILER, pointed out, whenever there is a move to deport them, those who come to their rescue for selfish reasons are the ones who employ (read exploit) them. Their departure would add to their employment bills for they can’t twist the arms of the local workers to the same extent.
Ms Khattak underlined the fact that our government has yet to sign the convention related to accepting the rights of the home-based workers.
And what is no less disturbing is that the two conventions – pertaining to minimum wages and equal remunerations for members of both sexes – that the government has signed are not being enforced. It only is reflective of the total apathy that our bureaucracy is known to have for social justice.
