PESHAWAR, Feb 2: A large number of home-based workers, mostly village women, need training to gain the knowledge of market to improve their economic status. A large number of non-governmental organizations working with home-based workers in various districts of the NWFP gathered at the provincial networking meeting of the Homenet, a network of organisations working for recognition and rights of home-based workers, here on Thursday.
The organisation which set up the platform includes Roots for Equality (Sindh), Aurat Foundation, Sarhad Rural Support Programme, Sangi and others.
The participants urged the Homenet to provide support to home-based workers in enterprise development and accessing the market.
The participants hailing from various districts said that there is dire need for proper training of home-based workers so that they could market their products in national and international markets.
“Their productivity has to be increased with skill development training, improved technologies, access to credit and direct access to market,” said Ms Rakhshinda Naz, resident director of Aurat Foundation, Peshawar.
She said: “The home-based workers also need to be recognised as workers in the labour laws of the country thus making them eligible for social protection.”
The Homenet has so far worked for the social security of home-based workers, conducted networking meetings between organisations and home-based workers and arranged field visits, conducted a national workshop in 2002 regarding formulation of a national policy about home-based workers.
She said: “The network had also arranged a Craft Mela in April 2005 and a workshop on designing and marketing for home-based workers.”
Munnawar Hamayun Khan, chairperson SRSP (NWFP), sharing her experiences with participants said that home-based workers faced problems in marketing their product as they had no access to the market.
She said: “The SRSP’s project ‘Badbaan’ is aimed at enterprise development in Haripur, Abbotabad, Mansehra and Peshawar. Entrepreneurs visited the market for exposure and it helped them in developing their market sense.”
Ms Hamayun said that home-based workers should know the requirements of the market and the idea of ‘one village, one product’ should be materialised. “A group of designers could help home-based embroidery workers to improve the product and make it marketable. The products of home-based workers should be displayed in exhibitions and fairs where they could catch the eye of exporters.”
Samina Khan, programme coordinator of the Sangi Craft Promotion Programme (NWFP), said that the main objective of the networking meeting was to gather and register home-based workers and organisations working with them and take their suggestions to constitute a national policy regarding the labour rights of home-based workers.