Baidari's survey on soccer ball industry: most women workers want to change profession

Local NGO Baidarie Sialkot has conducted a study to assess and analyse the employment, working, living and social conditions of the home based soccer stitcher women in Sialkot. It was conducted as a part of the project titled "Integrated Support to Home-Based Workers in Sialkot" in implementation with the joint technical and financial support by ILO and UNIFEM.
ILO is funding this activity through its "Towards Gender Parity in Pakistan (TGP)" Project. Taking up the assignment, Baidarie team, in consultation with the relevant stakeholders designed a questionnaire to collect the base line assessment data. Having imparted the necessary training, fields testing of the data collection tool and making necessary modifications in it, the field team was deputed to conduct detailed interviews with 120 Home-Based-Women-Workers at their working places which usually happened to be their own homes. The services of a seasoned sociologist were obtained to tabulate, analyse and interpret it.
Data inferences indicate that mostly young females coming from the poor family background were found working as home based stitchers in the soccer ball manufacturing industry. More than half of this lot happens to be un-married illiterate or less educated girls who work to supplement their family income. In addition to doing the home based work, almost all of these women perform, their domestic duties like cooking, washing and cleaning the house but their performance at the domestic front gets compromised because of their excessive engagements in home-based soccer stitching work.
The study represents that there are no formal training arrangements for the beginners to learn the soccer stitching skill. Women learn soccer stitching from their immediate family members and close relatives and their experience span ranges from one to thirty years (1-30). Home based soccer stitchers get work orders from the middle persons and more than half of them earn Rs 600 to 2,000 per month. The majority of the remaining ones earn Rs 2,001 to Rs 4,000 per month.
Just a very small fraction ie 2.5 percent of the total lot earns Rs 4,001 to Rs 9,000 per month by putting in their hard labours. The employers/sub-contractors do not issue any wage slip to the workers.
The home-based women workers are not satisfied with the wages they are getting presently. In their opinion the wages are very low while the prices of essential commodities are increasing on day to day basis without any reasonable and effective check on them.
There exists no written employment contract between the middleman and the home-based workers to govern and regulate the employment practices and ensure availability of labour rights.
Almost 66 percent of these women work for 4 to 6 hours on daily basis whereas 34 percent women workers work for six to eight hours a day. Nearly 87 percent women workers stitch two to four balls a day while 12 percent women workers stitch four to six balls daily. There are only one percent (1percent) women workers who stitch six to eight balls every day. Almost all the home based workers work in uncomfortable environment, insufficient space, improper light, and unbearable heat in summer and chilling cold in winter seasons.
These home based workers have complaints of body and joint pains and related diseases due to uncomfortable sitting postures and working in unhealthy environment. Their work requires them to meticulously engage their eye sight and apply full force of their arms/shoulders related strength so that they may do fast stitching and bind good knots. This kind of work causes them to suffer from body pains etc.
The study indicates that neither the home based workers have been trained on the requirements of Occupational Safety and Health and use of Personal Protective Equipment nor have they been provided with the needed Personal Protective Equipment so very often they get themselves injured by having needle pricks.
The contractor/middleman provides them with no health care facilities. They usually visit the Government health care facilities where the condition of diagnostic and curative facilities is just hopeless. The middle persons have not provided first-aid kits at any of these home based stitching centres.
The study indicates that the home-based women workers do not have balanced diet intake. They cannot even think of new dresses and shoes except on some important occasion or festivals like Eid or any marriage ceremony in the relatives.
The baseline study reflects that 17 percent of such families are living in one room-home. About 47 percent of the houses they live in consist of two rooms. About 4 to 15 persons live in these two-room houses. Nearly 22 percent of the houses comprise three rooms and 12 percent were consisting of four rooms while 6 to 14 persons live in these three as well as four room houses. The survey also revealed that 6 to 18 persons were living in five-room-houses. The ratio of five room houses is just 2 percent. There are approximately 55 percent houses in which toilets have been constructed with cement while 45 percent of the houses have mud made toilets and their hygienic cleanliness cannot be ensured in the prevalent conditions. Data indicates that the entire range of home-based women soccer stitchers is ignorant of their rights to collective bargaining and/or formation of any union or association. Almost all of them are totally unaware of Social Security, Employment Old Age Benefit, Workers Welfare Fund and Group Insurance etc. They simply stated that they do not have any knowledge of any of the Labour Laws.