KARACHI, Jan 31: Speakers at a conference on Tuesday urged the government to sign the International Labour Organization Convention-177 that deals with the home-based workers so that the rights of millions of such workers could be safeguarded.

The conference on ‘Home-based women workers’ was organized jointly by the Home Net Pakistan and Aurat Foundation. Over 160 participants representing numerous civil society organizations working on the issue in the province attended the conference. They urged the participants to create awareness among the home-based workers (HBWs) regarding their rights and mobilize them so that they could form unions to highlight their issues.

Dr Azra Talat, Meher Taj, Aslam Brohi, Hassan Pathan, Zaibunnisa Malah, Rahila Soomro, Basheeran Solangi, Albia Bhatti, Waheed Feroz, Sajida Begum, Sharifan Baloch, Ghafar Malik, and others stressed that the HBWs be given due recognition and their right to form union be recognized so that they could decide the minimum wages for the work and safeguard their rights.

They said that the ILO Convention-177 had defined the HBWs as those who work either at home or at a workplace near their home which did not belong to the employer. They may do piecework for an employer, who can be a middleman or they can be self-employed on their own or in a family enterprises.

According to the ILO studies, they said, there were over 100 million HBWs in the world and half of them were in South Asia – India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka.

The speakers pointed out that over 80 per cent of the working population in the country was employed in the informal sector and majority of them were women. Approximately 80 per cent of these women were home-based workers.

They said the HBWs belonged to the poorest section of society, who usually started their work from the age of 10 or 12 years of age, and were mostly illiterate. They lacked mobility, were dispersed and worked in isolation and felt powerless to attempt collective action, the speakers maintained.

Referring to the ILO Convention 177 adopted in June 1996 to give recognition to the HBWs at international level and set minimum standards for pay and conditions, they said that the same could be translated into national policies and laws.

The conference was told that major problems of the HBWs were unrecognized status, fixation of minimum wages, double work burden, lack of social security net, poor working conditions, limited access to markets, gender discrimination and exploitation by the middlemen. They said that efforts were being made to form trade unions of the HBWs so that their rights could be safeguarded.

The speakers maintained that a country could not progress in real sense if half of its population was not given its due rights or equal opportunities. They said that a large number of home-based working women were employed in bangle making, carpet weaving, embroidery, football manufacturing and garments industry, but they were not given any protection under the labour laws, nor they were members of any trade union.

They urged the government to sign the ILO Convention-177 so that the rights of all such marginalized workers could be safeguarded. Besides, they called for raising awareness among the home-based workers regarding their rights so that they could form unions to highlight their issues.