Great expectations: In Kotri’s camp, labourers freed from bondage but tied down by poverty

The families can not go home as they fear the landlords will kidnap them again.

HYDERABAD:

For about 300 children living at the Salahudin peasant camp at Kotri, flights of fancy are the only way to escape the grim reality that they are shackled to.

Eight-year-old Hindu boy Magyo Kohli is one of them. He yearns to be a soldier, but has no idea how to make this dream come true. He is also blissfully unaware of the fact that before Pervez Musharraf came to power, people from his religion were not allowed to join the army and it is only recently that hundreds of young Hindus have been recruited.

The parents of these children at the camp were freed from the private jails of Sindhi landlords and even though they have been living here for over 16 years, they do not have access to basic services such as healthcare and education.

There are 1,050 people living in this camp, and more than half of them are female. Going home is not an option because they run the risk of being enslaved again by the same landlords.

“Our children couldn’t get an education and now the generation after them is also waiting,” said Khamiso, who was freed from a private jail near Umerkot. “It is only recently that an NGO enrolled our children in a nearby private school.” His 11-year-old daughter has finally been given admission into a nursery class.

Magyo has to walk a fair distance, as do the other residents of the camp, if he needs to answer the call of nature. The National Coalition against Bonded Labour said that about a hundred people died within a year at this camp because they were forced to use dirty water.

Most of the children at the camp are undernourished. “I have one cup of tea for breakfast and then go to school. For lunch and dinner, I have onion and yoghurt,” he explained.

His mother, Meeran, also lamented the poor health of the children at the camp. “Many children are suffering from tuberculosis, anemia, hepatitis, pneumonia and a whole range of other diseases,” she said. “We need a basic health unit or dispensary at the camp because we are too poor to afford the expenses of going to far off government hospitals.”

She isn’t too hopeful about the future either. “In the past, two NGOs tried to establish private schools but they were shut down. We have doubts about the latest educational project by another NGO and would rather have a regular government school instead,” she said.

The national manager for the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child, Kashif Bajeer, said that his organisation has enrolled 52 children from the camp at nearby schools.

From 1995 to 2005, more than 8,000 bonded labourers were released throughout the country, but their rehabilitation still remains a challenge. At present, there are several camps in and around Hyderabad and Matli where more than 10,000 laborers have been provided shelter - but not by the government. The Salahudin camp, which was set up in 1986 by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, was meant to be a temporary shelter. It started to attract freed peasants from across the province as other organisations such as Green Rural Development Organisation and Sparc started to work on the issue. “When we first set the camp up, we thought that it was going to be a temporary set up,” said Dr Ashothama, an HRCP co-ordinator. However, the labourers did not return to the fields and now work for daily wages in Kotri town and its factories and mills. They earn 200 rupees to 300 rupees daily. Some sell vegetables or fruit in the markets.

But despite the bleak conditions they are surrounded by, the children are still upbeat. Magyo may be wearing dirty clothes and roaming around barefoot, but he envisions himself being clad in an army uniform at some point in the future. “I will have my own gun and salute the flag one day, and when I come back home, I will salute my mother as well!”

Published in The Express Tribune, December 2^nd, 2011.