Govt urged to register home-based workers at UCs

Meeting of labour groups urges govt to implement new policy.


Express October 14, 2011

LAHORE:


The government has been urged to gather data on home-based workers at the union council level in order to effectively implement a new labour policy for this sector.


Home-based workers are workers who make products at home, rather than in a factory. HomeNet, a network of organisations formed in 2005 to press for labour rights for such workers, organised a discussion on a draft National Policy on Home-based Workers, particularly focusing on labour issues in light of the 18th Amendment.

According to the draft, 65 per cent of the 8.52 million home-based workers in Pakistan are female, many of them girls aged 6 to 14 who work 12-16 hours a day under “harsh, unhealthy and hazardous” conditions.

Speakers at the meeting, which was held here on Thursday, urged the provincial government to review the draft policy and formulate a strategy to enforce it.

Ume Laila Azhar, executive director of HomeNet Pakistan, said that the Punjab Assembly was the only provincial parliament not to have passed a resolution calling for the formation of a provincial council for home-based workers. She said the provinces should develop a common strategy for implementation.

Azhar said that 11-13 per cent of Pakistan’s total workforce was engaged in the informal sector making value added products. She said that the government should try to understand the emerging situation to implement the policy.

The draft of the policy, formulated by the Ministry for Women’s Development in collaboration with the Ministry of Labour, proposes that home-based workers should have the right to form unions or associations, to healthcare and protective gear, and to literacy and social security benefits. HomeNet member groups from Multan, Faisalabad, Okara, Gujranwala, Sahiwal, Muzaffargarh, Sargodha, Sheikhupura, Kasur, Lahore and Islamabad attended the meeting.

Former MNA Mehnaz Rafi, Justice (retired) Nasira Javed Iqbal, Strengthening Participatory Organisation Regional Coordinator Salman Abid and Irfan Mufti of South Asia Partnership Pakistan also spoke at the meeting.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 14th, 2011.

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