“I would like to find some more work to make ends meet but it seems impossible for me to find out who needs a domestic help,” says Farzana Saleem, a house maid who does the washing and cleaning, the sweeping, dusting and odd jobs. Her current income cannot support her family of four children and a frequently unemployed husband.

“It would be a relief to see that my husband too finds jobs more frequently since in his line of work there is no monthly pay.” Her husband, Saleem is a painter and usually relies on grapevine to inform him about odd jobs.

This seems a typical situation in a country where the working class must rely on an unreliable network to find new prospects. Blue-collar workers including housemaids like Farzana, and others such as drivers, cooks, gardeners and office helpers are all at the waiting end, constantly searching for far better opportunities than where they are currently working.

Like any other person they too want to earn more, travel less and have a better working atmosphere. Unfortunately, very few have these advantages in the places where they work. And unlike the more educated white-collar workers they do not have access to job advertisements, and cannot find out for sure exactly what their new workplace would be like.

Enter KamataPakistan.com, the very first web portal in Pakistan which caters only to the blue-collar worker. With a supporting toll-free phone line that can help candidates find work, enlist themselves and even make their resumes, this newly launched website was formed based on a longitudinal study on Pakistan’s labour market.

The study has highlighted that such markets can perform better if the flow of information is increased. The web portal is inspired by this study and a research conducted by the Duke University and World Bank which concluded that the primary path out of poverty is income diversification which can be achieved by having access to multiple job opportunities.

CEO Junaid Saleem says their project was originally meant to be a franchise of a web portal from Bangalore called Babajob.com, however when this did not work out due to practical reasons, they could not help taking inspiration from them mainly because the Indian market dynamics were similar to Pakistan’s and would therefore be easier to follow. Mainly the project aims to increase the flow of information and make it more efficient.

For the employer the benefits are countless: it will save time in hiring, especially by lowering the cost of resourcing. There will be a variety of choices and they will be provided with a pool of well-trained workforce. For the employee there will be an increase in income, a better work atmosphere, and a resume which will be included in our pages for contact. The databases are updated which means the information is adjusted to see whether a candidate is currently employed or not, what his or her new pay is etc.

“It is easy to make a resume for the candidate too simply by calling on our toll-free number and answer our questions,” says Junaid. “In fact, we ourselves note down the mobile number where the person calls from and we call him or her back so as not to waste their credit. The process of enlisting is completely free.”

Besides this people from small towns and villages and areas outside the urban centres will be able to find work in their own areas without having to commute. “In our experience we have found that people in general do not like to commute too far to work. They especially do not like to uproot themselves and move to a big city where it is difficult to adjust. So they prefer to find work where they live. This web portal can help them with that. It also makes it easy for the job applicants to search for an employer of their suiting so it works both ways really.”

He quotes a study by economist G.M. Arif and says the unemployment rate in the informal sector of Pakistan is at least 12 to 13 per cent. Meanwhile the informal sector itself makes up for about 70 per cent of the economy. Therefore to ignore this unemployment rate or even the sector as a whole is ridiculous.

“We cannot ignore the people who make most of our economy,” he says. “The word of mouth networks create huge inefficiencies in the labour market and tend to benefit only those with strong social networks. The result is a mismatch between job requirements and the skills of the employee. We are aiming to reach out to job seekers through mobile phones which have 70% penetration in Pakistan.”

To market the idea the company has put up their posters advertising the number (0800-11582) in over 30 katchi abadis (settlements). They have already started receiving calls and have about 6,000 candidates in their database. Along with the partnerships they have formed with the Punjab Skilled Development Fund, Risk Discovered, Resource Access and Faces Pakistan, and some other organisations they are set out to perform better they believe.

Risk Discovered, which is a Karachi-based firm that checks on background profiles, has helped them present packages to employers with regard to who they may be recruiting. The packages include simple background checks, police record checks (up to one year), Nadra verification, previous employment check (three years), and certification verification. All these of course have rates which the potential employer must pay to the company.

While each of these partners has a role in providing good candidates with training and grooming from their institutes, KamataPakistan also manages to find people given to them via the network they have created, that is people who know others recommend them for enlistment too.

“If this succeeds the way we see it,” says Junaid, “then I foresee myself impacting at least 20 per cent in the next five to 10 years. And that is quite a lot. It comes to about eight million people. If I make an impact on them then I will consider myself to have achieved my goal.”