Daily Times

A Pakistani human rights activist, Syeda Ghulam Fatima, has been honoured with a Global Citizen Award by the Clinton Foundation for her tireless work to bring bonded labour in Pakistan to an end. The scourge of bonded labour represents nothing more than modern day slavery and its continued existence reveals a humanitarian black hole at the heart of the country. Bonded labour is most dominant primarily in the brick kilns industry but is also prevalent in the carpet industry, agriculture sector and industry. It works on the basis of a vicious debt trap, as desperate workers take loans from their employers at exorbitant interest rates to be theoretically repaid from their wages. However, through manipulation of the record and taking advantage of the bonded labourers’ illiteracy, this debt goes on increasing. Due to the ballooning debt, the time period for which they have to work keeps on stretching indefinitely and thus entire families get trapped working for these predatory employers for entire lifetimes and across generations in a futile bid to pay off the loan. Violence, coercion, forced imprisonment and constant surveillance are used unsparingly to ensure the workers do not run away. This ghastly practice perseveres because it occurs at the intersection of corruption and deeply ingrained bigotry in the Pakistani milieu, for most of the victims of bonded labour belong to society’s outcasts: the lower castes, Christians, Hindus. These groups of people are readily dehumanized and due to their marginalisation they have limited access to justice, education or the sympathies of the wider populace. As a consequence of this indifference, there are more than eight million modern slaves suffering in Pakistan, which gives us the distinct dishonour of having the third highest number of indentured labourers in the entire world.

The movement to abolish bonded labour in Pakistan, of which Ghulam Fatima is a leading member, has a long history of struggle. One of its major successes was the Bonded Labour System Abolition Act of 1992. However, this legislation, which is deemed to have comprehensive solutions to the problem and lists adequate punishments for offenders, is entirely toothless because of lack of effective implementation. Despite the presence of laws deeming it illegal, the exploitation of Pakistan’s most vulnerable sectors continues unabated, in part because the influence and wealth of the owners of brick kilns or carpet factories causes the authorities to turn a blind eye. Therefore the work of activists like Ghulam Fatima, who despite being actively involved in the struggle and having suffered greatly at the hands of brick kiln owners for years only shot to prominence when a popular Facebook photojournalist featured her story for an international audience, is to be highly commended. While her achievement and recognition should be celebrated, celebrating her would be pointless if the renewed attention for this issue does not spur some real action to bring about the end of this reprehensible practice and implementation of the 1992 Act. *