Home work

Home-based work has been a staple of the Pakistani export economy for decades. It is also the place where some of the most exploitative labour practices can be enacted without check. Underpaid 12-16 hour workdays are the norm for most of the women-dominated home-based work force in Pakistan. Estimates show that over 12 million people in the country are employed via home-based work. These workers are unable to benefit from any labour laws, despite the fact that many of them work longer and more gruelling hours that the formal workforce. The informalisation of their work comes with benefits only for employers who are able to evade the limited checks that do exist on labour practices in the country. Home-based work policies were only notified in Sindh last year while other provinces have been slower to create a framework to register and monitor labour practices in the home-based work sector. These workers make up almost 15 percent of Pakistan’s workforce but remain the lowest priority. The estimated monthly income for a home-based worker who works over 12 hours for six days a week is a paltry Rs4,342 – less than 35 percent of the minimum wage.

In Sindh, despite the notification of the policy, there has been no implementation on the ground. According to representatives of home-based workers, the process of registering home-based workers has not started. Once it does, the sheer scale of it will require more than one bureaucratic office in a metropolitan city to undertake the task seriously. Most home-based workers are based in villages without the ease of access to bureaucratic structures that could aid their registry once the government initiates a registration process. Home-based workers continue to be major contributors to the export sector but are not amongst the priorities when export reforms are announced. These workers need to be brought under the minimum wage, working hour limits, old age benefits and social security nets. It is also bizarre that none of the labour surveys or the census exercises in the country have attempted to compile accurate statistics. There is a long way to go before home-based workers get their due recognition. With the current low levels of interest, the chances of a leap forward from the Sindh government or any other provincial government are slim, which is a shame. The same home-based workers are voters and have the same rights as any other working citizen. The government would do well to initiate action to bring them into the mainstream labour practices.