LAHORE: Represen-tatives from trade unions, powerloom and garment workers’ associations and others discussed bonded labour issues at a meeting at the regional office of the National Commission of Human Rights (NCHR) on Wednesday.

The NCHR recently took up the issue of ‘bonded labour’ in collaboration with a non-government organisation.

Pakistan is ranked 6th, of 167 countries, according to the Global Slavery Index. Bonded labour continues in agriculture and brick kiln sectors.

According to an NCHR study, over 60 per cent of the country’s nearly 60 million labour force is vulnerable to modern slavery and more than two million people are trapped in debt bondage. Forced labour mostly exists in country’s informal economy sectors such as agriculture, brick kilns, tanneries, carpet weaving, mining, glass-bangle making, construction and domestic work. The severity of the issue was highlighted and the government representatives were urged to come up with serious policy recommendations.

The meeting discussed a paper by the Democracy Reporting International with support from the NCHR that provides inputs in conducting legal analysis of the Pakistan’s Bonded Labour System (Abolion) Act, in comparison with regional frameworks. The study by the NCHR has also found that modern slavery in Pakistan is in fact widespread but there is no policy or legislation available to deal with the issue.

To abolish bonded labour and other forms of modern slavery, the government should make legal and institutional arrangements along with a comprehensive social protection scheme for the poor, the participants said.

They urged the government to formalise the informal sector which was not acknowledged. A huge chunk of the workforce is in the informal sector not counted in the GDP, depriving the country of its economic input and the workers of their basic rights. Majority of the bonded labour victims who were freed, have been released under the habeas corpus (unlawful detention) petitions while hardly any convictions have taken place under the Bonded Labour System Abolition Act 1992.

Bonded Labour Liberation Front’s Syeda Ghulam Fatima said that there were serious issues with the Bonded Labour Act amendments that allowed peshgi system to continue. She said that the law clearly allowed loan of sum Rs50,000 which was catastrophic to say the least as this would eventually bring the borrower in extreme debt.

Published in Dawn, November 29th, 2018