Home-based workers demand rights

Participants of massive rally demand registration by the govt

KARACHI:

A huge rally was held on International Home-Based workers Day and the participants demanded that the Sindh government immediately start the process of registering such employees.

The rally was staged by Home-Based Women Workers Federation (HBWWF) and it marched from Fawara Chowk to the Karachi Press Club (KPC). A large number of home-based workers, belonging to different sectors, participated in the rally. They were led by HBWWF General Secretary Zehra Khan and they raised slogans for their demands.

Addressing the rally, Zehra Khan said home-based workers of Sindh, through their untiring struggle, have successfully got their legal status and identity recognised. She said this was a historic event, not only in Pakistan, but also in the region.

She said that sadly despite the passage of a law, its implementation was negligible. She said that though in Sindh there is a law about home-based workers, but practically none of them are getting their due rights.

Khan said till this day, HBWWF had filled the registration forms of more 3,000 home-based workers, but the Sindh Labour Department had not completed the process of registering these workers. She said the registration process is being lengthened unnecessarily.

The general secretary sad despite the passage of a year, the forms of these home-based workers could not be verified and recorded. She said if these delaying tactics were not stopped, the workers would besiege the Sindh Assembly.

Khan said that the back-breaking price hike, coupled with Covid, had made the life of the common man miserable. She added the families of home-based workers were also badly affected. She said home-based women workers could not make both ends met despite working for long hours.

"They are deprived of minimum wages." She said in 2019, the Sindh government set a good example for by issuing an official notification to include glass bangles industry in the list of industries covered under the Sindh Minimum Wage Board. She continued, however, that this notification could not be implemented as yet and today these workers are given wages of less than US $2 per day.

"We strongly demand that the government of Sindh to accelerate the process of registering home-based workers and fixing their wages."

Addressing the occasion, United Home-based Garments Workers Union General Secretary Saira Feroze said that the government of Sindh had given identity to hundreds of thousands unknown home-based workers, but the real success would be when that this law was practically implemented.

She said the increase in the wages of home-based workers is non-existent or even negligible, while due to Covid, their real wages had already decreased. She regretted the fact that the inflation was increasing with each passing day, but the wages of workers were not being increased. She said as a result, poverty, hunger and disease were on a sharp rise. She said prices of food items, medicines, gas and electricity are being increased continuously.

Read More: ‘70m workers in Pakistan deprived of basic rights’

National Trade Union Federation (NTUF) General Secretary Nasir Mansoor said that more than 16million home-based workers of Pakistan were being more burdened with harsh conditions attached to loans of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). He said for a loan of $6billion, the whole country and its population were pawned of to the IMF.

He said it was a bitter fact that Pakistan was no longer an independent nation, but a slave to the IMF. Mansoor said that the government and opposition both have no solution to the problem. He added the nation and country had to fight another war of independence to get rid of the slavery of these international lenders, adding the working class would play an important role in this war.

He appealed to the progressive, pro-people democratic parties and labour organisations to steer the country clear of this crisis. He said they should also announce a joint struggle against poverty, hunger, inflation and joblessness.

At the end of the rally, the participants urged the government of Sindh speed up the process of registration of home-based workers and issue cards to them.

They asked that home-based workers should be registered with the social security departments. The participants also demanded proper legislation to this effect. They said that like the glass bangle industry, the Sindh Minimum Wage Board should also determine salaries of home-based workers of other sectors. They suggested that workers of glass bangle industry should be given wages as per the notification of 2019.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 21^st, 2021.