Jannat Bibi, a middle-aged woman, has prominent Bengali features and a dusky complexion. She sits on a wooden plank inside a compound in Machhar Colony. Assisted by her three daughters, she peels and cuts shrimps with clockwork precision. The peeled shrimps are then put in a bucket and sent away. She waits for her children to arrive back with 50 rupees in hand. This is her daily reward and the meagre wage which keeps her house running.

Married at the age of 13, her husband wanted sons to help him make money and Jannat gave birth to daughters. He left her after she gave birth to their fifth daughter. “‘Daughters are a liability,’ he used to say,” laments Jannat Bibi.

Not having a male member in her house, she is the prawn-peeler matriarch. She shares that she tries to stay strong for her daughters through the numerous difficulties she faces. “I have struggled a lot in my life and I am still struggling,” says Jannat. “Once you are married there is no brother or sister. You are on your own.”

A combination of crushing poverty, labour exploitation and lack of infrastructure strips women of their dignity

Jannat had no option and was compelled to engage in this labour to earn bread and butter for her family. Her husband, in any case, was unable to work without possessing identity documents. He was considered a security hazard for the maritime agencies. This state of affairs deprived their daughters of attending school. Jannat Bibi’s is a story of every other woman living in Machhar Colony.

The population of Machhar colony is almost one million. A majority of residents are Bengalis whose sole livelihood is fishing and peeling shrimp. Most of them are not CNIC (Computerised National Identity Card) holders, which restricts them from working elsewhere. The men are not even permitted to go fishing without a CNIC, hence the women and children often end up as the bread-winners. Shrimp peeling factories are where their lives start.

Every day, women and children are gathered as early as 6am in a compound. Crouching in a shabby encampment made of discarded cloth and wood, malnourished, worn-out families peel the skin off shrimps and collect them in makeshift dirty baskets placed nearby. Each woman is accompanied by her children, some as young as four years old. Heaps of chilled shrimp — the layers of ice prevent it from rotting — are placed in front of each family. The floor is wet with the water washed off the shrimp and melting ice mixed with dirt and the filth produces an unbearable stench.

Sometimes it can take an entire day to peel the heap, sometimes more than 10 hours. The peelers are given one basket after another of shrimps in bulk. In the time it takes to get through the whole lot of shrimps for the day, nobody is seen sitting idle for a minute.

The working conditions at the prawn peeling area are miserable. The women and children are not given any gloves to wear; all the peeling is done by hand and no tools or equipment are provided to make the work humane. The colour of the peelers’ bare hands turns white as they peel the frozen prawns. Hence, most of the women and children are seen with bandaged hands because their fingers are infected. But this bears no impact on their employers. “Peeling can only be done with fingers,” says Ashfaq Bhatti who rents a compound at Wara.

The working conditions at the prawn peeling area are miserable. The women and children are not given any gloves to wear; all the peeling is done by hand and no tools or equipment are provided to make the work humane.

According to Dr Maria Rajput, a dermatologist at Civil Hospital, patients with severely infected fingers require continuous treatment but they hardly come for follow-up visits. “The [infected] fingers start swelling. Then the skin begins to peel off which eventually gets worse,” says Rajput.

She explains that patients tend to use different creams which are easily accessible in their area and prescribed by a pharmacist in the local dispensary. This causes a serious issue on the skin because the hygiene condition is already bad in that area and not treating it properly also leads to skin cancer.

According to Rajput, most of the residents of Machhar Colony just apply Betnovate skin cream on their infected hands instead of getting proper treatment.

“If they come for treatment, they will have to miss out on work which means they won’t have food for the day,” she says.

Asad Iqbal, chairman at the Human Rights Commission Pakistan (HRCP) says, “The prawn peeling industry does not follow labour laws.” According to him, it is easy to comment on how child labour is unethical but it is also important to understand that there is no other alternative for these people to run their houses. “Our government is busy coining money for themselves. Why would it care about the ones who cannot caste a vote?”

There are a number of companies involved in fisheries and prawn peeling at Machhar Colony but they do not give out their names to their employees. The workers are answerable to only the middlemen.

The four off-season months are the hardest. “Instead of eating three times in a day, we eat twice a day in order to save money,” says Jannat Tahera Hasan, the founder of Imkaan Foundation at Machhar Colony, says that their Mother & Child Care clinic is overflowing with patients who have contracted multiple skin diseases in advanced stage, during summers. She emphasises the absence of any process, technique or system which could manage this state of affairs. Therefore, the women and children of Machhar Colony run out of options and accept these hazards as a fait accompli.

According to her, 80 percent of diseases in the area are preventable. But people are unable to take any precautions and contract these diseases. They tend to themselves only when they can no longer bear the affliction.

Hasan says all the inhabitants of Machhar Colony suffer from scabies, a contagious but preventive skin disease, which either they are ignorant of or they disregard it. Their misery is further compounded due to inadequate water supply. To stay away from scabies, clothes and bedsheets needs to be washed properly but they don’t have the means to do so as lack of water plays a large role in the area.

“Everyone speaks against child labour but what is being done to stop it?” questions Hasan.

On the other side of the colony, Jannat says that peeling prawns may damage their skin but it is also their source of income.

“If we are getting to eat after damaging ourselves then what is the harm in it?” says Jannat.

Published in Dawn, EOS, November 4th, 2018