Grim days: Ill health compels domestic worker to live in misery
Maryam cannot regularly go to work where she earns Rs4,000
Maryam cannot regularly go to work where she earns Rs4,000.
GILGIT:
Maryam’s cell phone is ringing but she does not have the courage to answer it. She has run out of excuses to ask her employer for yet another day off from work.
“I wish you could understand what I’ve been passing through,” murmurs the woman as her cell phone falls silent. “But you won’t understand because you have all the luxuries one can dream of in life.”
The 39-year-old woman works as a domestic help at a house in Gilgit for a meagre salary of Rs4,000 per month. Her job is to do the dishes and iron clothes.
However, she is not regular to work solely because of her ill health – something that has threatened her job.
“I was operated during the birth of my last kid,” Maryam tells The Express Tribune. “I don’t know what happened but later the doctors said there was a complication in my urinary system.”
She has four children and singlehandedly looks after them after her husband divorced her five years ago.
Desperate straits
The woman had to sell her cow to meet the expenses of her treatment in Islamabad, but that did not solve the matter for her.
“After tests in Islamabad I was asked to arrange Rs75,000, but this time I had nothing to sell out and no one to help.”
Maryam, who hails from Ghizer, says the weakness has left her useless. It was because of this ill-health which forced her to quit a job at a hospital earlier where she would earn a monthly income of Rs8,000.
“Life is very ruthless on us and see how my son is out there to help us in his tender age,” she said of her 19-year-old son, Sajid, who drives a taxi for a meager monthly salary of Rs5,000. “I don’t know what to do – if I don’t work what will my children eat.”
Maryam says she tried to get herself registered for Benazir Income Support Programme during Pakistan Peoples Party government but she was not considered a deserving person.
“I don’t want to live, but it’s my kids for whom I want to [keep striving]. If I die they will also die, of hunger.”
Published in The Express Tribune, July 25th, 2016.
Maryam’s cell phone is ringing but she does not have the courage to answer it. She has run out of excuses to ask her employer for yet another day off from work.
“I wish you could understand what I’ve been passing through,” murmurs the woman as her cell phone falls silent. “But you won’t understand because you have all the luxuries one can dream of in life.”
The 39-year-old woman works as a domestic help at a house in Gilgit for a meagre salary of Rs4,000 per month. Her job is to do the dishes and iron clothes.
However, she is not regular to work solely because of her ill health – something that has threatened her job.
“I was operated during the birth of my last kid,” Maryam tells The Express Tribune. “I don’t know what happened but later the doctors said there was a complication in my urinary system.”
She has four children and singlehandedly looks after them after her husband divorced her five years ago.
Desperate straits
The woman had to sell her cow to meet the expenses of her treatment in Islamabad, but that did not solve the matter for her.
“After tests in Islamabad I was asked to arrange Rs75,000, but this time I had nothing to sell out and no one to help.”
Maryam, who hails from Ghizer, says the weakness has left her useless. It was because of this ill-health which forced her to quit a job at a hospital earlier where she would earn a monthly income of Rs8,000.
“Life is very ruthless on us and see how my son is out there to help us in his tender age,” she said of her 19-year-old son, Sajid, who drives a taxi for a meager monthly salary of Rs5,000. “I don’t know what to do – if I don’t work what will my children eat.”
Maryam says she tried to get herself registered for Benazir Income Support Programme during Pakistan Peoples Party government but she was not considered a deserving person.
“I don’t want to live, but it’s my kids for whom I want to [keep striving]. If I die they will also die, of hunger.”
Published in The Express Tribune, July 25th, 2016.