PESHAWAR, May 28: Social and economic oppression continues unabated in the Charsadda district, as the local landlords have made it a habit to exploit the peasantry, who get very meagre wages for a day’s toil, reveals a Dawn survey.
The wages compared to the workload come to a big naught and the sheer exploitation has made the life of the poor peasants miserable. They find it extremely hard to make both ends meet, what to talk of living a decent life. The khans pay them only Rs50, in some cases even less than this, for a day long labour at the farms, locals told this scribe.
They live in abject poverty and have no access to the basic necessities of life, like education, health and sanitation. In the remote areas of Utmanzai, Turangzai and Umerzai villages, a great number of peasants have no access to electricity, it was learnt.
“It is not only a norm but culture as well, though the so-called leadership of the Frontier province comes from the same area. Their traditions and value system both are at the root of this continuing saga of the peasants,” lamented an elderly peasant.
Another peasant, Hakimullah, hailing from the Turangzai village in Charsadda, said he owed Rs40,000 to his khan, claiming that he was even refused any farm for cultivation this season around. Having seven children, his only source of income is to work at the lands of the khan for which he is paid Rs 50, and at times less, a day.
“I cannot leave this village unless I pay the debt to the khan and, to tell you another thing, no other khan would lend me any money for that matter. Before conceding to give any money to me, the other khan would spell out his own terms and conditions, which might range from living in the village till a time the debt is serviced,” the peasant said.
At the local level, the physical exploitation of the womenfolk of the peasantry by the khans and their siblings is a bitter fact, said a school teacher in the Utmanzai village. “Nobody dares object to it, not even the civil society,” he maintained.
DAUGHTERS SOLD: The more destitute peasants even do not refrain from selling their girls to reduce the debt burden, although they know that their daughters would be forced into prostitution. This all happens in the garb of marriages, sources confided to Dawn. The girls so sold and bought are often taken to the Punjab province, where they are exploited physically and sexually, they added.
“There is a long chain which originates from the point where the girl is located and terminates in some brothel in the southern or central Punjab. In between is the entire range of people, starting from the girl’s father to local police, touts, middlemen, pimps and an elderly woman running a den,” they said.
According to sources, a girl living at the outskirts of Turangzai village, who was married by her parents to a person at Gujranwala for a sum of Rs50,000, returned home when she found her way to escape. Sources quoting the girl claimed that she did not find her spouse, once she reached her “in-laws” house.
“The girl was kept under a tight check so that she could not escape. After a weak, the “relatives” forced her into prostitution, but she did not give in. One day a stranger was sent into the room where she used to sleep. Then it became a daily routine,” the sources said.
The selling of their girls bring only a temporary relief in their lives as they could not sustain their families in a Rs50 a day, as they have to borrow again from the same khans and, thus, the debt-trap tightens around their necks, some other peasants observed.