“Earn $ 3,000 weekly free online jobs without any investment to earn dollar home-based form filling jobs, working from home, more details to follow our website.” This particular advertisement and many like it are flooding the internet and the print media. After reading it, my first thought was to say good-bye to my immediate profession, to indulge in a life free of hassles — with a huge amount of money pouring in, no travel to and fro between home, office and the courts, flexible hours, no need to dress up or interact with horrendously obnoxious and irritating people, and the list goes on and on.
As lucrative as it may sound, unfortunately, not all home-based work is such, especially for uneducated and vulnerable women. Since I manage a legal aid service, my interaction with women who have had a raw deal in life is frequent and heart wrenching. When I started, I felt that I was simply not doing enough for the many unfortunate women who stepped into my office, as their problems were vast and manifold — beyond mere legal services. They needed to be financially independent and economically viable, to be rehabilitated and integrated into a viable workforce, with equal and fair opportunity and remuneration.
Recently, I sent a client of mine to a women’s organisation for ‘work’. After speaking to the coordinator about her plight, I asked for her help and support, geared towards economic independence. My client, ‘Ayesha’, had been given up as a baby by her biological father after her mother had passed away during childbirth. Her adoptive parents, who were childless, raised her and pampered her, never telling her the truth. Her adoptive mother passed away when she was 15 years old. Worried about her, her father gifted half of his house to her and married her off to his nephew. When her father passed away a few years ago, her husband, who had become a paranoid drug addict with no job, started abusing her, wanting her to sign the house over to him. The assaults became violent and he started injecting her with substances while she slept. Tied down by the fact that she had nowhere to go and two children — a mentally challenged boy and a young girl whom her husband does not allow to go to school — she started stitching clothes for others, until one day her husband stole and sold her sewing machine. Last year, she fell prey to hepatitis and then had a massive operation on her kidneys. Unable to work outside her home, she started making envelopes and putting beads on shoes for an independent contractor, to put food into the mouths of her children. However, it was not steady work.
Ayesha was given a shirt to embroider by this organisation, for which she got paid a nominal amount. Then she was given two more shirts. As we kept in constant touch with her, we realised that she was being exploited. The payment she received for a hand-embroidered shirt was far less than the market charges for ordinary machine embroidered ones; she received no money for the material and the travel. When I confronted the administration, I was told that she was being paid far more than the going rate for such work. What is happening is that ‘middle men’ or women bring work to these organisations, which is distributed among poor, home-based women workers and then sold off to the market. I was told that women in parts of Punjab do such work for a mere Rs 50 that is why the rate is so ‘reasonable’. Fuming, I asked what, exactly, was the function of such organisations, purportedly working for ‘women’s empowerment’ if not to prevent exploitation of vulnerable women? I was not prepared for the answer: I was told that the women, ‘begums’ (well-to-do ladies), running the boutiques, who commission such work, are also ‘women’! I guess it makes perfect sense! Some women, who run organisations under the banner of women’s empowerment, also run private boutiques and enterprises, or their friends and families do. They get to sell items for thousands of rupees, while the poor woman who made the clothes cannot even buy a bag of flour with the money she earns after weeks of fine needlework! Yes, perfect sense!
Pakistan has still not ratified the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention on home-based workers. After the devolution, the responsibility lies with the provincial governments. The convention describes the term “home work” as work carried out by a person, to be referred to as a home-worker: in his or her home or in other premises of his or her choice, other than the workplace of the employer, for remuneration, which results in a product or service as specified by the employer, irrespective of who provides the equipment, materials or other inputs used. It obligates the member countries to formulate a national policy on home work, which “shall promote, as far as possible, equality of treatment between home-workers and other wage earners, taking into account the special characteristics of home work and, where appropriate, conditions applicable to the same or a similar type of work carried out in an enterprise. Equality of treatment shall be promoted, in particular, in relation to: the home-workers’ right to establish or join organisations of their own choosing and to participate in the activities of such organisations, protection against discrimination in employment and occupation, protection in the field of occupational safety and health, remuneration, statutory social security protection, access to training, minimum age for admission to employment or work and maternity protection.”
Millions of home-based women like Ayesha work as piece-rate workers for local and international producers in textiles, garments, football, footwear, agarbati (candle) and bidi-making, electronics, bangle-making and hundreds of such goods. They receive work from subcontractors and are remunerated at piece-rates. Despite their significant contribution to the economy, they remain grossly underpaid, with no healthcare, inadequate housing, have long working hours, suffer from a lack of regular income, with no direct market access, exploited and invisible to those sitting in the corridors of power.
Even if Pakistan does not ratify the ILO Convention, nothing bars it from legislating in favour of home-based workers. The constitution obligates the government to eliminate all forms of exploitation, to empower women by taking steps to ensure full participation of women in all spheres of national life, to make special provisions for the protection of women and children, including for just and humane conditions of work, maternity benefits for women in employment, to ensure social and economic wellbeing of the people and to promote, with special care, the educational and economic interests of backward classes or areas.
Could it be that these workers are invisible to the policy makers because perhaps they are the ones who commission them in their industries or business ventures, maybe run by their women? Could it be that empowerment and economic wellbeing of these workers will cut down their own profits? Why is it that we can sit in five-star hotels, sponsored by foreign funding, drink bottled water, eat food that costs in the four figures to talk about the plight of vulnerable women, yet we become the ones who exploit them for personal gains?
Earning $ 3,000 per week, sitting at home, is a Utopian dream for poor home-based women workers. However, earning a reasonable income from the hard work put in is a dream that should turn into reality, with the force of the law behind it. Perhaps, it is time to remove the invisibility cloak.
The writer is an advocate of the High Court