KARACHI: Sindh is the first province of Pakistan that has already enacted a law for home-based workers and now its rules are being formed so that this law could be practically implemented, said Secretary Labor, Government of Sindh, Abdul Rasheed Solangi, speaking at a moot here at the Arts Council of Pakistan Karachi auditorium previous evening.
The convention was organized by the Home-Based Women Workers Federation (HBWWF) to celebrate the first 10 years of their struggle here
Solangi said that his department is making efforts to resolve the issues of workers including home-based workers. He said that we are working on how to resolve the issue of labour contribution to the schemes of Sessi and other social security institutions, so that cards could be issued to home-based workers. He said a cabinet meeting is scheduled soon to finalize the matter of the rules of Sindh Home-based Workers Act 2018. He said Sindh Assembly has passed landmark laws to safeguard the rights of workers. He said we are making law after tripartite consultation. He said the government of Sindh believes in empowering women. He said the chief minister has approved a fund of rupees five Crores form home-based workers fund.
However, HBWWF General Secretary Zehra Khan in her address said the global economic crisis, as well as, slavishly pro-IMF policies of the present rulers of Pakistan have resulted in an unprecedented surge in poverty and hunger, hitting hard the working class, socially women worker. She said that the whole world is affected by the global economic and financial crisis. She said the sad result is an unbridled price hike, joblessness, poverty and hunger. She said the Pakistani rulers have handed economic planning of this country to the global lenders like the IMF, which have pushed millions of poor people including workers to the worst poverty and hunger. She said only in last one and a half year of the sitting government in Pakistan more than 1.2million workers have already been rendered jobless. Due to historic depreciation in the Pakistani rupee, the real wages have been slashed by 40percent and it is becoming hard for poor families to feed their children.
Khan said formal work is being shifted to the home-based sector, where women and children work as modern-day slaves. She said 70 per cent of 12million home-based workers are women and they are deprived of their basic human rights. She said that due to untiring struggle of the home-based women workers, Sindh has recognized the home-based workers as legal workers, but still, the federal government and the governments of other provinces are not ready to give legal cover to them. Even in Sindh province, though a Home-based Work Act has already been passed, it is not implemented due to non-drafting of rules. The federal government is shying away from ratifying the ILO Home Work Convention 177.
