Noor Afshan, a home-based worker (HBW) is very busy these days as she has to stitch dozens of trousers in a short time to accomplish the order she received from a contractor.

Afshan, a resident of Madina Colony, Shalimar, Lahore, and mother of four children, receives a wage of eight rupees (per piece/trouser) as per verbal agreement with the contractor.

Despite spending most of her time on sewing trousers on an electronic sewing machine, she is hardly able to earn up to Rs2,000 in a month.

“Until a few months ago, the contractor used to pay me five rupees per piece. But later, he increased the wages on my repeated requests,” says Afshan. But that is all the help she ever got. Once, when she received an injury on her hand and asked the contractor to help her, he refused to do so. “He said that I was among the several HBWs who have asked him for help, but he wouldn’t because I was not his responsibility,” she adds.

Like Afshan, there are a huge number of HBWs (a major part of the informal workforce) facing such issues in the country’s informal labour market for a long time. But neither the government nor others concerned have made any serious effort to recognise this sector even though it plays a major role in strengthening the country’s economy. According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) the informal labour sector must be given their due rights without any discrimination. “The Home Work Convention No.177 and recommendation number 184, adopted in 1996, will contribute to improving the situation of millions of home workers, a large majority of whom are women,” reads the ILO convention that has been ratified by the government of Pakistan.

Labour rights activist and Muttahida Labour Federation (MLF) secretary General Hanif Ramay says that the informal labour market has expanded to over 70 per cent of the entire country’s manufacturing industry, including hosiery, garments, electronics, embroidery, engineering automobile and bicycle parts, pharmaceutical, shoes, textile, agriculture and others. “It is a great dilemma that the sector, which covers over 70 per cent of the total manufacturing industry’s workforce doesn’t fall under any legal framework,” he deplores.

According to Ramay since they lack a legal identity or status, the informal workers, mainly the HBWs are being deprived of their basic rights such as minimum wages, social security/protection, health, insurance, pension, overtime, old age benefits and several others that are being enjoyed by the workers in formal sector as per labour laws. Talking about massive induction of informal labour in Pakistan, he says the sector started growing after General Zia-ul-Haq took over the country in 1977. Although he avoided denationalising the institutions, which had earlier been nationalised by Bhutto, he started acting upon policies of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

“The IMF and the World Bank always protect the United States’s capitalism system according to which they prefer protecting the rights of capitalists alone and not the workers. But on the other hand, none of the rulers, except Bhutto, followed the Russian concept of socialism that ensures protection of the workers’ rights first,” explains Ramay. This is why, he says, the IMF and the World Bank policies continue to protect the capitalists alone, further cementing the contractual labour system through middlemen (contractors) outside the workplaces. This has caused informal sector’s expansion to streets, muhallas and houses and open areas involving a huge number of people who work outside industrial areas on meagre wages.

The sector continues to benefit the capitalists at large, since the latter were earning huge amounts without having to pay tax of any sort to the government. “The factory owners only show the formal labour, working in factories in their official record and not the contractors or informal labour working outside,” says Ramay. With no laws to protect them, except the ILO Convention 177, the informal workers are being exploited by the middlepersons or contractors. Due to the absence of all legal benefits, these workers including children are not even organised and their scattered home-based workplaces ensure that they cannot even raise their voice for their rights.

While commenting on the issue, Shaheena Kausar, secretary general of Women Workers Union termed the informal workers as orphans. “The situation is at its worst. An HBW, who works almost for the whole day earns Rs40 to 50 a day whereas the contractor and factory owners earn more than hundred times that amount,” she lamented.

Since the workers, whether men or women, also engage their children at work, there are many incidents in which women and children suffered from various diseases, mainly skin allergy and asthma. Kausar quotes a case of one Sughran Bibi and her daughter Rubina who suffered from skin allergy. Both of them used to pack chemicals (blue powder-neel and various liquid janitorial items) at their home in Kahna Nu, Lahore. According to Kausar, there were many HBWs who received serious burn injuries while making matches and agarbatis, etc.

HomeNet Pakistan’s executive director Umme Laila Azhar said the informal sector was being denied of recognition because of its invisibility. “These workers don’t fall under the definition of a worker. They cannot be united because they are scattered in home-based workplaces. That is why there is no authentic data available with us that could at least infer the number of such workers,” she explains. She quotes some studies/reports conducted by a few NGOs that mention the informal sector to be comprising around 74 per cent of the total workforce of the country. With reference to this issue, Azhar says that although the situation in Thailand and India was not so different than in Pakistan, they have at least started giving social protection to such workers by initiating serious efforts in this regard. However, in Pakistan, the Punjab and Sindh are the only provinces where the departments concerned have started working out on this issue.

Punjab labour and human resource Department’s secretary Hassan Iqbal said the provincial government had taken very important steps to bring the informal sector into the legal framework. “For giving social protection and fixing minimum wages, we have devised a policy besides making a draft on the required law making,” he says, adding that the department was also getting various studies conducted through various NGOs in order to check the number of such workers and the problems they were facing.