Slavery is officially illegal and society abhors it. That is true; however, a remnant of slavery is still extant at the domestic level in Pakistan. These are domestic workers who have the lives of slaves. They may not be willing to do ‘domestic slavery’ but their parents are complacent in that act. In this way, the chains of slavery may not be forced on these children but they become complacently enslaved. This is true for the children (both boys and girls) employed as domestic workers to do household jobs ranging from sweeping floors, washing dishes, cleaning clothes and other chores and bringing grocery items from nearby shops to taking care of the toddlers of the employers. This sort of work done by children (who are under 18 years of age) falls squarely in the category of child labour.
Children to do household work are available both in villages and in cities. In villages, the children of poor workers (called kamey) of the village do the domestic work at the house of a landowner (called Zamindar) and their parents are paid in kind in lieu of their service. When the landowner moves to cities, he also brings along an army of domestic servants who are always determined to prove their loyalty to their master, even sometimes by laying down their lives. On the other hand, in cities, slums are the major provider of domestic workers. Residential areas in the vicinity of a shantytown are seen swarming with domestic workers, who do both part time and full time jobs. Even the middle class also affords these domestic workers. Part timers commonly live in the slums of the city but full timers are also brought from villages and towns of remote areas. Full timers are more vulnerable to domestic violence, molestation and death than the part timers, as the statistics of incidents indicate.
Parents of these domestic workers are complacent because they have to feed more than three children at a time. The meager or no source of income coerce the parents to let their children do this ‘soft job’ of domestic work instead of the ‘hard job’ of working at a auto workshop. Hence, not only over-population but also poverty is the major pusher of this phenomenon of transforming children into domestic workers, perhaps for the rest of their lives. Such children can neither seek education nor can they develop their own personality independently. They live as slaves and they die as slaves.
It is absolute dependence called faith in the employer (sahib or bibi) that makes the parents of these children send them for doing the soft work. Domestic workers are given meal, clothing and a meager amount of money. In this way, to ensure the survival of a domestic worker becomes the job of the employer and the parents of the domestic worker shift that responsibility for feeding and clothing to the employer. In big cities, poor parents are also found selling their children to use them as labour. Every year, floods brining along internal displacement and misery exasperate this phenomenon.
Problems emerge when a domestic worker hailing from a village or town fails to learn the norms of the city life or urban household. Problems get serious if a domestic worker is found indulging in (or accused of) theft or neglectful of his/her assigned duties. Most domestic workers are not mentally ready for the job but the financial constraints of their parents and dreams of city life beckons them to the household work in cities.
There have been incidents where domestic workers were tortured and even killed by employers. In January 2010, in Lahore, a 12-year-old maid, Shazia Masih, was beaten and tortured to death by her employer who happened to be a lawyer, Chaudhry Nadeem Advocate. Shazia was kept in confinement in the house and even denied medical aid. Her body bore marks of severe torture. When the lawyer was arrested, his fellow lawyers broke into the police station and rescued him. Later on, the matter was hushed up when the lawyer paid some money to the parents of the deceased girl as reparation. In December 2010, in Karachi, a 14-year-old boy, Muhammad Zafar, was kept shackled for months at the home of his employers at the allegation of the theft of gold items. The employers denied Zafar’s parents access to see him unless the money equivalent to the gold items stolen was paid to them. Zafar was rescued by the police when the neighbours raised a hue and cry on the illegal confinement and brutal torture. In June this year, in Multan, the case of Hina Gilani and her husband Faheem Bukhari killing a 10-year-old domestic servant, Jamil — who when mistakenly dropped a glass jug full of milk, was beaten with the broken glass and bled to death — is well known. The perpetrators were feudal lords who tried to bury the body secretly until the hue and cry raised by the father of the deceased.
These incidents show that society is clout-oriented and insensitive to the plight of domestic workers. Society wants to save the skin of those who are well-connected while it abandons those who are deprived. The incidents also show that the law does not come to help the poor and they are left at the mercy of the rich and influential employers.
The surveys conducted by certain NGOs such as Aurat Foundation indicate that female domestic workers are also prone to sexual harassment. Sadly, labour laws in Pakistan do not offer any protection to domestic servants. Medical aid, fixed working hours and holidays are unheard of in Pakistan, especially in rural areas where there is no hope of any change due to absence of schools and other employment opportunities. There is neither any supervisory body to regulate the lives of domestic workers nor is there any law to save them from the modern type of child labour.
The writer is a freelance columnist and can be reached at [email protected]