Sindh's civil society organisations have demanded of the government for land reforms to facilitate equitable distribution of resources to the rural poor in connection with the International Day of Peasant Struggle on April 17. According to a press release issued by the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research forwarded by the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), they also called for enhancing agricultural productivity and raising prospects for financial independence.
To address poverty, they said, poor people needed assets to sustain livelihoods, which in case of rural areas are titles to land. According to some estimates, more than 80 percent rural workers did not own their houses. Most, representatives of the civil society argued, lived under the feudal system, which did not grant them right to shelter. "Therefore, it is also demanded that all human settlements that are situated on state land held by any civil and non-civil government departments/institutions, in rural areas, be registered."
Stressing the need for amending the Sindh Tenancy Act, 1950, civil society organisations said, that the law should be amended in the light of demands made by peasants in the Charter of Demand which had been handed over to the Deputy Speaker of the Sindh Assembly on February 26, 2009.
They also called for setting up co-operatives of Haris (land to tiller) on at least 1000 acres. Sindh, it was argued, was characterised by a skewed land holding pattern where only a small minority had got hold of large chunks of agriculture land, resulting in expansion of the power base of such people and exploiting rural workers (peasants). Rural workers, the press release argued, were also deprived of the right to own agriculture land.
According to the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (Piler), Sindh had the highest incidence of absolute landlessness, with 26 percent or two million households without any land, while 26 percent of 700,000 households possess the lowest share in land.
"Majority of rural people have agriculture as major source of livelihoods in Sindh. It employs 13.46 million people having 7.74 million as rural and 5.72 urban workforce. But for the majority, working arrangements in agriculture - wage work, tenant farming, share cropping -are exploitative and/or yield little earnings."
This situation, it was argued, brewed an skewed nature of land ownership, excluding peasants and rural workers from the mainstream, resulting in their un-ending social vulnerabilities. Peasants, the press release said, were pushed into a quagmire of marginalisation where "they do not receive fair wages (Rs 30 per day in some areas)". The press release went to say that rural workers also faced sexual harassment, a lack of access to shelter and a dearth of crop insurance, had "no record keeping, no right to unionisation, and were slapped with the debt-bondage".-PR
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