ISLAMABAD, Feb 3: Bonded labour is “a growing phenomenon’ in Pakistan despite a stream of official committees, policies and funds, according to an International Labour Organization (ILO) official.

“We have the resources to abolish bonded labour. But this problem of modern day slavery is growing, taking new and worst forms like commercial sexual exploitation,” Mr Tauqir Shah told a seminar on “Women in Bondage” organised by Mehergarh NGO here on Saturday.

Oppressive treatment of domestic servants in urban centres was another problem, he added.

What disturbed Mr Shah, who is ILO adviser to the Ministry of Labours on the problem, was that the problem is not mainstreamed into larger human rights issues.

“Politicians, middle class, poets, writers and media are not highlighting bonded labour as one of the major evils of the Pakistani society. Since 1992 till today, only 16 cases of bonded labour have been registered,” he said.

He said the Bonded Labour Fund of Rs100 million established by the late Minister of Labour and Manpower, Omar Asghar Khan, five years ago had not been properly utilised. And the government was committed only in theory.

Marwa, a Hari (peasant) woman from interior Sindh, narrating gruesome experiences of bonded life said, “the landlord murdered two of my relatives, including my brother-in-law. We worked day and night without rewards. And our debts kept on building up.”

Marwa, like hundreds of other slave women working under a landlord had been victim of severe beatings and sexual abuse, she said. She managed to escape but the landlord and his gang kidnapped her five-year old son. “It’s been almost 10 years and I have no news of him. My heart cries out just thinking of my son. Help me get him back”, Marwa pleaded. Another Hari victim of bonded labour, Ms Lakshmi, escaped four times from the clutches of her brutal landlord. “I am living freely. My job pays very little but at least my family and I feel safe”, she said.

Another Hari woman, Ms Poni from interior Sindh, was raped for over a year by her landlord, Chaudhry Javed, she said. “He threatened to kill my husband. One day the Chaudhry and his men beat my husband and raped me in front of him. He was beaten so bad that it took a month for him to recover in the hospital.”

Chaudhry Javed had been threatening Ms Poni and her family, she said. I have come to Islamabad but he still sends messages of death threats.

Speaking on the occasion Dr Fouzia Saeed, a social activist said, despite frequent claims of human development, the society had been unable to abolish the evil practice of bonded labour. The weakest and poorest families live a life of perpetual exploitation. Why those breaking the laws are not punished. “Why Hari women are subjected to physical and sexual abuse?”, she questioned.