KARACHI, Jan 19: Speakers at a workshop on home-based women workers on Friday observed that there was no legal protection offered to the domestic workers in the country, and called for legislation to save them from the increasing injustices they have been suffering for decades.

“From 1955 to 2002, five labour policies have been introduced and there are more than 100 laws aimed at betterment of workers, but all this has done nothing to rid them of the abject poverty they have been living in,” trade union leader Fareed Khan said at the two-day workshop organised by the Aurat Foundation.

He pointed out that violence and injustices against domestic workers were rampant but government had so far done little to mitigate their sufferings.

Aurat Foundation’s regional coordinator for home net programme, Shireen Khan said a majority of the women workers in Pakistan was doing domestic jobs but their rights had never been recognised.

Aslam Brohi delivered a lecture on civil society, human rights and social conditions. Others who spoke on the occasion included Nuzhat Shirin, Naheed Akhtar, Ghulam Fatima, Salma Murad and Bhagwandas Mehraj.