KARACHI, Nov 20: Speakers at a workshop on Monday demanded that special laws specifically dealing with the problems being faced by home-based workers (HBWs) be formulated so that their rights could be safeguarded.

The workshop on ‘Situation of home-based workers – reference to their legal rights’ was organised by the Aurat Foundation.

The speakers said that the condition of workers employed in the organised sector was also not good but at least there existed laws which, if implemented properly, could protect their rights but the situation of these HBWs was even worse as there were no laws regarding their problems, leaving such workers at the mercy of the contractors or the middlemen.

They also urged the authorities to sign the International Labour Organisation’s Convention – ILO’s Home Work Convention C 177-- dealing with the issues being faced by these workers and also formulate local laws in its conformity.

The definition, according to the ILO C 177, of Home-Based Work is: The work carried out by a person in his or her home or in other premises of his or her choice other than the workplace of the employer for remuneration, which results in a product or service as specified by the employer, irrespective of who provides the equipment, materials and other inputs used.

They suggested that the government should register all the home-based workers and it should be made mandatory on the contractors etc to get their work done only from the registered workers. The government should also fix some minimum wages for such workers. They said that at present the home-based workers were not organised so they could not bargain for better wages. The speakers said that these workers had no facilities like medical, pension, insurance etc.

Some of the home-based workers present on the occasion told the audience that while the wages were increasing with time, their earnings had declined by between 30 to 40 per cent a month.

They said that they earned between Rs30 and Rs50 a day. The materials are supplied by contractors at their homes and these contractors then take the finished products and usually pay on weekly basis, they informed.

The contractor not only pay less but usually cheat also, they added. The workers – Rizwana, Kashifa, Sonia, Farhana, Ambareen, Naushaba and others -- said that they were helpless and could not ask for higher wages, which had declined by around 30 per cent in the past three to four years, as more women were ready to work for less. They said that the middlemen made a huge profit. Citing an example they said that if they were paid Rs50 for an embroidery piece, it was sold for over Rs1,500 in the shop. The shopkeeper and the contractor pocketed the profit.

Among others Mr Justice (retd) Shaiq Usmani, Shirin Khokhar, Nahid Syed and Malka Khan spoke on the occasion.