Exploitation and helplessness: Tales of home-based women workers

Merely 27 years old, Maher Negar has had seven major surgeries in the past eight years, including a malignant tumour removal, pancreas surgery, hernia removal, appendix and three C-sections. She is scheduled for a spleen surgery next month.

However, Negar’s traumatic health issues are not her only misery. Seven days a week, she works almost seven hours a day from her home in Orangi Town Sector 16 Gulshan-e-Bihar to make a paltry Rs45 per day, which she contributes to her family income. A home-based daily wage worker, Negar is among the thousands of women in Sindh whose stories of poverty, deprivation, back-breaking work hours and exploitation rarely make the news or inspire labour policy changes.

Despite her many ailments, Negar continues to work, wanting to help her husband Ahmed pay their monthly rent, Rs4,000. But she is unable to do so. The various medicines she has to take daily alone cost anywhere from Rs3,000 to Rs4,000 per week. Unable to afford that, she takes the meds thrice a week instead. This affects her health and ultimately delays the treatment.

Negar’s husband Ahmed works in a decoration shop. He makes a little over Rs10,000 and spends most of his earnings on buying a water tanker for Rs2,500, paying utility bills which cost Rs1,500 to Rs2,000, and other expenses, including Rs 1,000 in school fees of their three children.

Courage and hope

Negar is no stranger to rough times. When she was six years old, her father passed away and the same year, her mother lost her sight. Despite the difficult situation, her mother made sure that Negar continued school until she passed Matric. At the age of 19, she was married off to Ahmed. However, troubles continued to plague her. In a few years, Negar’s health began to decline and hasn’t improved until now. The difficult life and ailments have taken a toll on her appearance. “I am less than 30 years old but all my neighbours call me aunty,” said Negar, while assembling accessories of a headlight holder used in motorcycles.

Her health doesn’t allow her to go out for work in a factory or any other workplace, so she works from home earning a paltry Rs0.18 per headlight holder, which motorcycle mechanics sell for Rs35 to 45 in the market.

Negar considers herself fortunate to have completed her Matric. Even though she couldn’t continue her studies further, she doesn’t blame her fate. “I missed a lot of things in my childhood, but fortunately I completed my Matriculation in 2006 and I am able to do something better than other women.”

She also keeps accounting for other women who are engaged in the same work in the area. Most of the home-based women workers can’t calculate their daily wages. Therefore, she helps them maintain their accounts in a dusty old register.

Tales of exploitation

Negar is actually one of many home-based women workers who have been making motorcycle headlight holders for the last two years in the area.

A local elderly woman brings the unprocessed material from the market and distributes it among the workers at their homes. Women in 10 to 15 families in the vicinity receive the material to make the headlight holders. Each worker gets Rs180 after the production of every 1,000 pieces.

“It’s been more than two years, but the employer is still unwilling to increase our payment by just Rs20 for a thousand pieces,” said Rani Sajid, another worker. “I learnt to make headlight holders within three days, but it’s not a simple work. It takes time to increase speed to make more pieces.”

The workers don’t even know who their employer is, she added. They can’t even raise their voices too much for an increase in their payment because the employer could just stop giving them work.

‘Who cares?’

“No one cares what home-based women workers suffer,” said Saeeda Khatoon, the chairperson of Ali Enterprises Factory Fire Affectees Association. Saeeda, who lost her son to the 2012 Baldia factory fire, has been a vocal activist for labour rights and is also working to organise home-based workers in the locality.

Characters like contractors, subcontractors, agents, and others involved in the production and supply chain are causing the exploitation of these women workers, she said. “There are many businessmen who prepare their products at home with the help of women workers. But they don’t have direct interaction with these workers because of the involvement of agents.”

She added that the implementation of the Sindh Home-Based Workers Act, 2018, which advocates for the rights of home-based women workers, may bring a positive change in their lives.

Saeeda further pointed out that a majority of home-based workers don’t even have CNICs which is the first thing recruiters from factories ask for when hiring. This makes it impossible for these women to find work outside of their homes. “Home-based workers will be unable to speak up until they get full awareness about their own legitimate rights,” she added.