KARACHI: The recent floods and rains have compounded the problems of the already vulnerable home-based workers in Pakistan, especially in Sindh. A very big challenge is ahead for them in the shape of food crisis and closure of textile sector as the torrential rains have severely damaged rice and cotton crops, said speakers at a press conference on the occasion of International Home-Based Workers Day at the Karachi Press Club on Thursday.
Addressing the press conference, Zehra Akbar Khan, general secretary of Home Based Women Workers Federation (HBWWF), informed the audience about the Kathmandu Declaration for rights of South Asian home-based workers.
The declaration was adopted on October 20 in 2000 by representatives of South Asian governments, UN agencies and trade unions during a conference organised by United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organising (WIEGO), which was supported by International Development Research Centre at Kathmandu, Nepal.
She said that there were at least 50 million home-based workers in South Asia and 80 per cent of them were women.
Speakers highlight problems of women workers
She said that in the declaration it was promised that a national policy for home-based workers would be formulated by each participating country. However, this is still a distant dream.
Zehra said that Sindh was the first province and Pakistan the first country of South Asia to pass a law for home-based workers in 2010.
Later Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan also passed such laws for home-based workers, but the Punjab Assembly is yet to pass this law, she added. Also there is no such law in the federal territory of Islamabad.
She regretted that despite the passing of the law, its proper benefits and privileges were yet to be given to home-based workers. She said after Covid-19 and the recent rains and floods the situation had further deteriorated for home-based workers, who were facing a bleak future.
“The registration process of home-based workers is still in limbo and the Sindh labour department is not serious about registering home-based workers although HBWWF has already provided them with the necessary equipment and software to do so,” she said.
Zehra regretted that the stakeholders were not being properly consulted regarding the practical implementation of the Home-Based Workers Act. She added that they had filled registration forms for a lot of home-based workers and deposited the forms with the labour department but they had not started their verification process. She said that they were giving one month’s ultimatum to the Sindh labour department and if it failed to complete the verification process they would be staging protests.
She said that their demand about universalisation of labour for Sindh Employees Social Security Institution (SESSI) benefits had been accepted and included in the definition but it was said that home-based workers would also contribute of Rs1,500 per month for it. She said that the earning of women home-based workers was so meagre that they cannot give such kind of monthly contributions.
Therefore, the condition should either be abolished or reduced to Rs200 or Rs300 per month. She also demanded that home-based workers should be included in the orbit of minimum wages.
She also demanded equal wages for equal work for all home-based workers. She said that a council under the Home-Based Workers Act should be established without further loss of time.
Peoples Labour Bureau (PLB) president and senior PPP labour leader Habibuddin Junaidi said that Sindh had passed more labour-friendly laws than any other province of Pakistan.
But he accepted that the issue of implementation of the laws was there, adding that the government should take practical steps to get the laws implemented.
He said there were “system issues” and tardy bureaucracy that were the main hindrances in the way of swift implementation of labour laws, including the Home-Based Workers Act.
Perveen Bano, a home-based worker from Yousuf Goth Karachi, said that women home-based workers were facing a lot of difficulties due to growing joblessness and very low wages.
“We went door to door and got registration forms filled from women home-based workers but the labour department is not verifying them,” she said while warning that if the registration process was not started soon, the women home-based workers would protest strongly and it would create immense political problems for the Sindh government.
Nasir Mansoor, general secretary of the National Trade Union Federation Pakistan (NTUF), said that more than a decade had passed for the Kathmandu Declaration, but the National Policy for Home-Based Workers was yet to be formed in Pakistan.
“We have not yet ratified the crucial ILO convention in this regard. International labour agencies are not taking on board the real representatives of Sindh labour in the consultation process despite the fact that almost 70 per cent of industries are situated in Karachi. Anti-labour pacts with the International Monetary Fund, the process of de-economisation is on the rise and formal labour is being shifted to informal labour and de-economy sector on a fast track,” he said.
The speakers called for getting the Home-Based Workers Act fully implemented by constituting a council under it and ensuring registration of home-based workers in order to provide them their due benefits and privileges.
Published in Dawn, October 21st, 2022
