Amina Bibi, a 27-year-old mother of three, does ‘adda work’ six to eight hours a day at her parents’ home in Shalimar Town. Adda work is a type of embroidery on dupattas and dresses. A suit costs between Rs8,000 to Rs15,000. Amina gets Rs 200 to 300 for one duppata or suit. Sometimes it takes her a week to complete one suit.
Amina, one of millions of home-based workers in South Asia, knows her work is worth more than she gets, but there’s not much she can do about it. “I live at my parents’ home and my brothers don’t like my going out to visit markets. So I am dependent on the contractor who takes orders and raw materials from different factories/designers and hires women like me to get the work done,” she says.
Organisations working for the rights of women and home-based workers are observing the first ever Home Based Workers Day on October 20 (today) in Pakistan, with an aim to get appropriate wages to millions of workers like Amina who are not registered with any government department in Pakistan.
Recent surveys put the number of such workers at 7.2 million in Punjab. Around 80 per cent of home-based workers are women, who are often not allowed to go out for work or who don’t have direct access to markets and depend on middlemen to get work. According to data compiled by the Labour Department and non-government organisations (NGOs), home-based workers make up 70 per cent of the informal workforce.
The Labour Department has drafted a provisional policy for the registration and regulation of home-based workers, but the policy is still with the office of the chief secretary. The draft policy states there are an estimated 8.52 million home-based workers in the country of which 65 percent are women.
“There is no safety net or social security system for HBWs in Pakistan,” said Ume Laila Azhar, executive director of HomeNet Pakistan, an NGO. “They are not even recognised as labour. All four provincial governments need to make their HBW policies to regulate millions of these workers. They should be registered and brought under the social security net. We helped the provincial government in Punjab to draft the policy which is still pending,” she added.
(Read: Informal sector: ‘Recognise home-based women workers as labourers’)
Labour Director Saeed Awan said that the policy had been drafted and awaits approval. “Different NGOs are also on board on this issue to help out HBWs,” he said.
HomeNet is organising a series of events on the first South Asian Home Based Workers’ Day to commemorate the Kathmandu Declaration 2000 on home-based workers, said Azhar.
“The HBWs day will be celebrated simultaneously in India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. The mega regional event is in Nepal where HBWs and supporters from all over South Asia are joining to meet and celebrate the day,” she said.
A vigil will be held outside Lahore Press Club at 5:30pm to observe the day. A ‘national consultation’ on “the opportunities for HBWs in purview of the draft policy of HBWs and post devolution scenario” will be held on October 29 and an exhibition of products made by HBWs will be held from October 27 to 29 in Lahore.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 20th, 2011.
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