HYDERABAD: Speakers at a conference highlighted poor working conditions, lack of health and safety measures, low wages and harmful impact of climate change on women farm workers in rural areas and urged the government to include them in all social security schemes for labourers.
They said at the conference organised by Sindh Community Foundation in cooperation with Human Rights Commission of Pakistan in Hala on Thursday that women cotton pickers worked in scorching heat but received paltry wages that fell well short of the minimum wages offered to industrial workers.
They said that women suffered from health hazards as well, especially heatstroke and snake-bite but they did not receive any compensation from landowners for permanent injury or death during work.
They demanded health insurance for the cotton pickers and said that the farm workers suffered serious hardships during Covid-19 pandemic, especially when they had to travel to cities to get treatment for different diseases and incur heavy expenses on account of transportation charges. They did not receive any support from landowners.
They said that Covid-19 badly hit these workers but a very small number of them were enlisted in Ehsaas programme even though this group needed social safety nets and economic support to cope with inflation and poverty during pandemic.
They said that Sindh Industrial Act was a big hurdle to farm workers’ rights as the law said that a landowner had to verify his or her labourers for their registration as trade union but most landowners avoid doing so. Hence, practically no women farm workers could register as union under the act.
Officials of labour department said that the government was committed to work for the protection of farm workers.
A group of girls related to farm workers performed a tableau depicting poor conditions of women cotton pickers.
The speakers included Hyderabad Directorate of Labour’s regional director Nagina Junejo, deputy director labour Abdul Samad, assistant director labour Noor Mohammad Lakho, Javed Soz and Aisha Agha of Sindh Community Foundation and labour rights activists Taj Marri.
Over 200 women cotton pickers from 10 villages of Matiari attended the conference.
Published in Dawn, February 12th, 2021
