LAHORE - One does not always
need a time machine to travel into the past - a
visit to a typical brick kiln in Pakistan's Punjab
province is enough to evoke a time when human
beings were traded like animals and slavery was
rampant.
Overburdened by loans, generation
after generation of workers, totaling about 4.5
million spread across 18,000 kilns around the
country, toil for nothing
more than the promise of freedom.
Ata
Muhammad (28) and his wife work for 18 hours a day
at a kiln in the outskirts of Lahore, where they
are paid 450 rupees (US$4.80) per 1,000 bricks,
irrespective of how long it takes to complete the
task.
According to estimates from the
labor department, it takes a standard family of
five, including children, a whole day to make
1,000 bricks.
A study by the Center for
the Improvement of Working Conditions and
Environment found that "a family of two adults and
three children can make 500-1,200 bricks a day
depending on their skill and physical health."
The tasks include fetching mud from two or
three kilometers away, soaking it in water,
molding it into bricks, transporting the finished
product to the kiln and finally baking and grading
each brick.
In case of inclement weather
or illness the workers earn nothing and are forced
deeper into debt, begging for loans from their
employers who are happy to extend the line of
credit, which acts as a noose around the necks of
many workers. Once indebted, workers cannot leave
until they pay off their outstanding loans.
The loans, known as an 'advance', or
peshgi in Urdu, are the root of all kiln
workers' woes, according to Ghulam Fatima,
secretary general of the Bonded Labour Liberation
Front (BLLF), a rights group working to end bonded
labor in Pakistan.
Children of kiln
workers are born into bonded labor, working long
hours alongside their parents.
She says
the kiln owners extend loans for occasions such as
marriage, births and deaths, in an effort to tie
the workers more tightly into servitude.
"This action is totally illegal, as ruled
by the Supreme Court of Pakistan (in 1988). Under
the law a kiln owner can only release an advance
equal to or less than two weeks' wages," she told
IPS.
For every 400-rupee payment that Ata
is entitled to, the kiln owner deducts 150 rupees
to settle a loan he claims he granted Ata's
father, though Ata has no memory of this.
Fatima says this is totally unjust, as the
minimum wage set by the government is 665.7 rupees
per 1,000 bricks.
She added that numerous
kilns pay a wage as low as 300 rupees.
"If
the government ensures payment of minimum wages to
kiln workers and recovery of dues from owners, who
have been paying less than the legal minimum, most
of the workers will be able to clear their debts."
As unregistered laborers, kiln workers are
also denied social security cover. Since their
employers do not set aside part of their wages for
emergencies, they have no safety net upon which to
fall in times of financial distress.
If a
contribution were made to a social security fund
on their behalf, it would signal an end to the
system of 'advances', according to Mehmood Butt,
general secretary of the All Pakistan Bhatta
Mazdoor (kiln workers) Union.
"If you get
a marriage grant at the time of your daughter's
marriage, free medical care for you and your
family at social security hospitals and even a
death grant, why would you opt for exploitative
loans?" he asked.
Butt told IPS that
families of kiln workers carry price tags
equivalent to their outstanding loans. By paying
this amount, owners can effectively 'purchase'
workers from one another.
If a worker runs
away from a kiln, he is traced with the help of
police and local politicians and all the money
spent during this exercise is then added to his or
her outstanding debt, according to Butt.
A
lack of identification documents adds another
restriction to kiln workers' mobility. Khalid
Mehmood, president of the Labour Education
Foundation (LEF), pointed out that the
Computerized National Identity Card (CNIC) - the
right of every Pakistani - is the prerogative of
but a few kiln workers.
"Once you have a
CNIC, you can apply for social security
registration, get enrolled on voting lists,
benefit from welfare schemes, open bank accounts
or apply for jobs. Kiln owners cannot afford all
this," he said.
Mehmood told IPS that the
National Database Registration Authority (NADRA)
set up mobile camps near some kilns close to
Lahore earlier this year, with the intent of
issuing CNICs to bonded laborers. But armed
gangsters hired by kiln owners prevented all but a
few from actually reaching the mobile centers.
Shaukat Nizai, media spokesperson for the
Punjab labour department, believes bonded labour
cannot be eradicated without empowering the
workers through education.
This, he says,
will enable them to live and find sustenance away
from the remote kilns where they were born and
where many expect to die.
Without
alternative skills and knowledge, he told IPS,
kiln workers and their families are doomed to a
lifetime of toiling in the heat, never breaking
the metaphorical chains of their bondage.
Shaukat told IPS that a project called the
Elimination of Bonded Labour in Kilns (EBLIK),
launched in 2009 in the district of Kasur in
Lahore, has worked with the ministry of labour to
establish 200 schools to educate 8,000 kiln
workers' children.
"It was not easy. It
took us a long time to convince the kiln owners
that this would help them as well."
He
added that the government has also started issuing
soft loans to kiln workers to eliminate the
advance payment system.
The government is
also in talks with kiln owners regarding
registration of workers with the social security
department. Additionally, it has set up a helpline
and a complaint cell, both of which assist workers
in demanding minimum wage and other rights granted
to them under the law.
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