DATELINE SARGODHA: Woes of field and kiln workers

SARGODHA DISTRICT is well known for its agro-based economy and feudal system. The landlords here do not rely on self-cultivation. Most of them depend on field workers. There are a large number of field workers but they have no effective association for the protection of their rights and welfare, and main reason is that there is no unity among them.

It is normal for a field worker to get huge advances for his own marriage or for the marriage of his son or daughter and thereafter accept the slavery of the landlord along with his family, particularly women and children. Against continuous service of day and night of his family in the house of his master he gets just three bags of wheat of 300 kg every year and Rs 600 per month but he remains in debt as he cannot pay back the advance which increases with time.

Sometimes the workers attempt to free themselves of slavery upon the persuasion of some NGOs and sometimes they approach the court to get rid of bonded labour. Though they often succeed in getting their freedom, they are trapped by another landlord who pays for the fees of lawyers and shows in his account almost double or triple the amount paid to counsel. In this way, they, with their families, enter into the slavery of another landlord.

In the area of village Mela and Mateela, tehsil Kotmomen, most of the families of field workers had even sold their kidneys to get rid of the oppression of their landlords but they were still suffering the after-effects of kidney removal and slavery.

Field labourers in thousands are in a pitiable condition all over the district and most often news appeared about the raids carried out for the release of bonded labour. However, no solid measures have been taken so far for their betterment.

Muhammad Aslam of Moazamabad said his elders were peasants who were awarded some piece of land under land reforms. But their landlords did not allow them to enjoy the fruits of own land and they were given a merciless beating and forced to transfer back the land they had received from the government. He alleged that the police and revenue officers helped the landlords to get back their land from the poor tillers. He further added that the landlords did not allow the children of a worker to get education and even today he said their children were far away from education even though the government claimed ‘education for all’. He alleged that most of the young women of workers were subjected to rape but nobody bothered to tackle the problem. He said that the government had introduced apparently tenant-friendly schemes but neither were these implemented in letter and spirit nor any concrete step was taken to change the fate of the field workers. He suggested that the state land should be given to landless tenants and a proper check should be maintained so that the allotment was fair and impartial. He alleged that such allotments mostly benefited favourites rather than the deserving and legitimate people.

He suggested that the government should set up rehabilitation centres at the union council level where the children of workers should be given proper education. Landlords who prevented them from getting education should be punished. He further added that female members of workers’ families should be saved from the excesses of younger landlords. He suggested that a special task force comprising impartial and honest women police officers be set up to inquire into the matter.

He alleged that most landlords were involved in heinous crimes like dacoity, cattle-lifting and robbery and they were paying a regular share to the police. He pointed out that police officers even, when transferred to another police station or district, paid regular visits to some landlords. He alleged that in case a worker tried to disclose the malpractices of the landlord or the police, he was implicated and subjected to torture. His women were also subjected to rape and minor sons to sexual abuse.

Another glaring example of bonded labour in Sargodha is the brick kiln workers. There are about 600 big and small kilns in the district. The life of their workers is more miserable than that of the field workers. Last week the family of kiln worker Bashir Ahmad was got released by the bailiff of Sessions Court, Sargodha, from Meelowal Miani Road, Bhalwal. It was reported that kiln owner Zafar Iqbal managed elopement of wife of Bashir Ahmad with Zulfikar and was getting forced labour from his daughters Hameedan Bibi, Saima Naurin and three sons; Iqbal, Naseem and Nasrullah.

When this correspondent contacted a female kiln worker of tehsil Sahiwal, she said that they were leading a miserable life of slavery. She said that male and female members of their family with minor children of up to four years worked for a mere Rs 400 for making 1,000 bricks but they never received even this amount in cash as it was always adjusted against some advance which never ended.

She disclosed that women, including minors, mostly worked in the house of the kiln owner day and night and never got any remuneration for the extra labour put in by them while the male members of their family often worked at the dera of the kiln owner and in return got only a loaf of bread. She admitted that they were frequently raped and if any female resisted she was involved in false cases of theft and handed over to the police which meted out the same treatment to her. She said that NGOs and government agencies raised voiced against Vani but no body paid any attention towards the sale of women in Sargodha and other districts of Punjab. She said that her father, a kiln worker, received Rs 40,000 from her husband for the marriage of her brother. She said that she was married to a person of old age and now he was lying on a cart while she was working day and night to feed her minor children and the disabled husband.

A police officer opting anonymity said that bonded labour could be controlled if sincere and honest efforts were made jointly by the police, NGOs and politicians. He said that no body should expect impartial working from a police officer who was posted on the recommendation of influential landlords and well-to-do people. He said that if a poor women came to a police station with complaint of rape, she was subjected to further sexual abuse by police officials.

Muhammad Khan, who is well known for managing raids against kiln owners, said that he had adopted this as his mission after his son lost his life due to the physical torture of a kiln owner who suspected him of stealing his wrist watch. He added that his daughter was also subjected to torture by the police upon the complaint of the landlord in whose house she was working as a maid. He said that her daughter was stripped and beaten in the police station.

Al Gore is back with a mission to save the planet

LONDON: Here’s a situation not many would have predicted back in 2000. Al Gore is addressing a tent packed with maybe 800 people — and the place is trembling with laughter. The famously wooden former vice-president, whose personality was so dull, according to one rival, that when “Al Gore has a fireside chat, the fire goes out”, is tickling this crowd at the Hay Festival like a veteran stand-up.

“I am Al Gore and I used to be the next president of the United States of America,” he says, opening the routine. When that gets a warm laugh, he scowls: “I don’t happen to find that very funny.”

It has become a familiar act, but people enjoy it all the same. It’s a variation on a theme: how he was denied the US presidency in 2000 despite winning the popular vote. He mocks himself as a ‘recovering politician’ who, after nearly a decade in the White House as number two to Bill Clinton, took time to get over the loss. “I flew on Air Force Two for eight years,” he says, “and now I have to take off my shoes to get on an aeroplane.” That gets another sustained laugh, but it’s no joke. One of the more striking images of An Inconvenient Truth, the new and acclaimed documentary charting Gore’s one-man campaign against climate change, is of the former VP lugging his bags, alone, through a string of anonymous airports, frisked like everybody else. (For a green, he flies a lot.)

No one is quite sure what to make of this mission that Gore has undertaken since he was deprived of the presidency six years ago. Tirelessly, he has been touring the US and beyond, delivering a PowerPoint presentation that sets out methodically and calmly, through pictures, graphs and even cartoons, how humanity is cooking the planet.

Sit down face to face with Gore and the changes of the past six years are visible. He’s heavier now, his jaw and jowls fuller. The hair is greyer, too. The shirt is open-necked, to signify a recovering, rather than serving, politician. And he displays a passion that many, including his own supporters, wish he had shown more often in 2000.

“The scientists are virtually screaming from the rooftops now,” he says, his voice rising. “The debate is over! There’s no longer any debate in the scientific community about this. But the political systems around the world have held this at arm’s length because it’s an inconvenient truth, because they don’t want to accept that it’s a moral imperative.”

Patiently, and surely for the 10,000th time, he explains what’s going wrong. The atmosphere is like a coat of varnish around the globe, he says. When it’s thin, as it should be, heat naturally escapes. But when it gets thicker, thanks to carbon dioxide emitted by us, it traps in the heat and the world gets warmer. “It’s cooking and wilting the most vulnerable parts of the eco-system, melting all the mountain glaciers, the north polar ice cap, parts of Antarctica, parts of Greenland.” That molten ice-water will raise sea-levels, flooding food-producing areas that all of us rely on. Eventually it will submerge whole cities, from San Francisco to Shanghai. The site of the Twin Towers will not be a memorial garden: it will be underwater. “This could literally end civilisation.”

What does he make of nuclear power, declared by Tony Blair to be ‘back on the agenda with a vengeance’? “I’m sceptical about it playing a much larger role,” he says. “In the eight years I served in the White House, every weapons proliferation issue we faced was linked to a civilian reactor programme.” Besides, it’s expensive and there are other, renewable sources that are new and efficient. “Maybe in China and in Britain it will play a role, but I don’t think it’s going to be a silver bullet.”

There will have to be other ways, starting with a realisation that this is a shared challenge for all humanity, one that should transcend all other differences. He agrees with the scientists who say we have 10 years to act, before we cross a point of no return. “We have everything we need to solve this crisis, save perhaps political will. But in a democracy, political will is a renewable resource.”

That sounds like a cue for him to renew his own career. Indeed, the emotional charge running through An Inconvenient Truth, and indeed Gore’s speech at Hay, is that 2000 represented not just a personal blow to Gore but a terrible setback for the planet. The world’s only superpower was within a few hanging chads of having a conviction environmentalist at the helm. Surely with the power of the White House, he would have acted to slow America’s vast output of carbon emissions. You watch the movie, including the archive shots of Florida, and curse the planet’s bad luck.

Gore himself works hard not to seem bitter; indeed, the humorous shtick is meant to suggest a man who can now laugh at those wretched events. He tells me he has had an exchange of letters with Ralph Nader, the environmentalist whose independent candidacy siphoned off precious votes from Gore. “Nothing substantive,” he says, but a personal correspondence after both men lost their mothers.

Later I ask Gore if he’s moved to the left these past six years. After all, he denounced plans for the coming war in Iraq in September 2002, long before his Democrat colleagues, and he now unashamedly attacks corporate special interests. A flash of anger: “No! If you have a renegade band of rightwing extremists who get hold of power, the whole thing goes to the right. But I haven’t moved. I’m where I’ve always been.”

To describe the Bush administration in such terms is indicative that, for all the gags, Gore’s fury has not gone away. So is he gearing up for another go? “I don’t expect to be a candidate.” Is there some event that could change his mind? “Not that I can see,” he says, with a wide grin.

But isn’t there a moral obligation, given what he knows about the fate of the planet? He can’t just do a slide show; surely he has a duty to run? “I resist that,” he says, pausing before suddenly becoming animated once more. “Look, I don’t deny that this is the most powerful position in the world, but even if you’re the president you can’t move if the people aren’t there, and if Congress isn’t there.” He reminds me of the Kyoto negotiations, in which he played a key part. “I came back and sat with my staff and asked ‘How many [of the 100] senators can we count on to ratify this?’ We had one. We couldn’t get to two.”

So now the focus is on moving public opinion, so that the politicians are pressured into, and then have the room, to do the right thing. “I honestly believe that the role I can most usefully play is to change the minds of the American people.”

Although that says he’s not running, yet there could be a political calculation here, too. Gore’s global warming speech would be “robbed of its moral authority the moment you added those three little words, ‘Vote for me’”, says one leading Democrat. If he wants to drive home his message on climate change, he needs to be the non-politician, with no self-serving motive. On the other hand, it makes sense to keep the possibility of a 2008 candidacy alive, just to pique the interest of the press and others. If people think Gore might run again, they’ll queue up to listen to him. I put that theory to Gore, who smiles: “In US-China relations, one of the guiding principles is constructive ambiguity.”

There are indeed plenty of signals pointing in the opposite direction, towards a run. Gore is fond of quoting Churchill and his warnings of ‘the gathering storm’ of fascism. And everyone knows that Churchill came out of the political wilderness to lead the battle against the storm.

Ask his staff whether they want him to run and they do their best not to smile. The Clinton-era Democratic consultant James Carville says that wanting to be president is not an itch that you scratch and then it’s gone. Gore has run four national campaigns and was all but groomed for the top job by his senator father since boyhood.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service