KARACHI, Oct 15: The traditional trade of broom-making is dying steadily creating fear of redundancy among hundreds of people, most of them women, engaged in this business for decades.

Broom-making, has remained a family business and the workforce comprised mainly family members living in coastal villages.

At least 200 such families in Budhni Village of Keamari Town alone at this moment have desperately been seeking some alternative to their livelihood and their struggle has now become a fight for their survival.

Lack of sufficient the investment and skills that is essential to switch over to some other trade has been compelling these poor families to produce whatever quantity they could sell amid sharply declining requirement.

The hardworking women can be seen busy day and night beating straws and leaves and tying them up with metal strings to give them the shape of a broom. Their collective efforts lead to a stockpile of the produce which is later sold door to door or some outlets in markets.

The return is negligible. "We get up early in the morning and start work. We usually continue the work till late in the night, but in return we receive a meagre amount of money," Rahima Raib, a housewife, told PPI in the wide courtyard of her house in the village.

All her family members - from an eight-year-old child to a 70-year-old woman - work whole the day and late in the night to finish 100 pieces of brooms per day. Carrying bundles of brooms, these women can be seen strolling in the streets of lower and middle-class localities of Keamari and Lyari towns to sell their produce at a bargain price.

Another such woman, Fatima, who has two sons, works in a private firm but joins in her daughter-in-law in broom-making after returning home. "We do not sleep before midnight," she said.

Middlemen have also a role in the business. "They purchase our produce at a very low price, i.e. Rs2.50 per piece to sell it in the market for Rs4 each. However, they usually buy our produce in bulk," she added.

The broom-makers get raw material on day to day basis at their doorsteps. A single bale of grass or date-tree leaves is enough to make 70 to 100 brooms. The per day earning of a family in this business comes to Rs40 to 60. Obviously insufficient, remarks one of the broom-makers.

Around 50-100 women of this village have to go to different warehouses on Hawkesbay Road for labour. Their average earning is Rs70 per day for a 10-hour job. Expressing his views on the decline in broom-making trade, Mandhro Bhand says since the raw material has become expensive, it is no more feasible for us to continue with this trade.

The overall price hike and unemployment have plunged these families in a deep crisis and the womenfolk have to continue with this trade despite all odds and hardships as this is the matter of the whole family's survival.

Traditionally, these families had been engaged in camel grazing in the Indus delta and were seasonal migrants. They used to spend six months in Thatta's coastal area and remaining period of a year in Karachi's coastal areas to feed their camels.

Due to the shortage of freshwater in the delta, grazing fields vanished and these families lost their traditional occupation. Majority of these families had also been engaged in fishing but fish catch also declined affecting them badly.

Among other occupations these families opted for in the past were embroidery and handicrafts but after depletion of fish stocks, they preferred to adopt brook-making as their profession and the main source of income. -PPI