Shocking, indeed, it is to learn from a Recorder Report appearing the other day that official apathy to the woes of the people inhabiting rural areas, where agriculture essentially belongs, has acquired ghastly proportions.
According to the report, agricultural workers, mostly women, who play a vital role in production of cash and other crops run, at least, much greater risk of death by handling killer pesticides, compared to workers in other sectors. With huge quantities of different pesticide chemicals applied annually in this country, farm workers remain exposed to killer pesticides while engaged in harvesting, planting, and soil levelling activities.
What is all the more distressing about such a tragic situation is this that even in the absence of statistical evidence several reliable studies have established that hundreds of agricultural workers die each year while thousands of others suffer injuries or poisoning by chemicals. Reference, in this regard, has also been made to the findings of a study that the cotton crop is a major consumer of pesticides - about 57 percent in Pakistan. A study on women cotton-pickers in Khairpur district has noted that 70 percent of them experienced sickness, with an average of 10 out of 68 picking days.
No less appalling is the fact that blood test of 40 persons engaged in the application of pesticides, along with 38 cotton-pickers, mostly women, revealed that 12 percent of the former and 39 percent of the latter were found having below normal resistance level. It has also been pointed out that 19,812 persons, associated with agriculture reported sickness during the cotton season, and that 3,566 of them had to be hospitalised.
Worse, cotton which is fondly referred to as silver fibre, and consumes the bulk of pesticides will thus be noted as contributing the most to the diseases in rural women from its toxic effects. In so far as authenticity of such reports is concerned, it has also been pointed out that studies carried out by the International Agency for Research in Cancer, are reported to have found enough evidence of cancer-causing substance or agents in pesticides, while human health with leukemia, lymphoma, plastic anaemia, soft tissue sarcoma and breast cancer.
They are also stated to have established reproductive health impact on women due to exposure to pesticides, further documenting increased incidence of miscarriage, stillbirth, and delayed pregnancy amongst women married to men employed in pesticides mixing and spraying. Moreover, they also found evidence of increased risk of birth defects from parental exposure to pesticides specific herbicides besides disrupting estrogen cycle in women as also causing menstrual problems.
The pathetic plight of female farm workers it has also been attributed to increasing number of women in agricultural jobs because of large-scale migration of men to urban areas for better opportunities, thus resulting in some 40 percent women accounting for the total workforce in the agriculture sector. All this, put together, will certainly point to a sort of compulsive apathy of those expected to deal effectively with such distressing situations.
This should leave little to doubt the simple fact that far from averting such alarming threat to female farm workers despite horrific reports based on studies carried out experts and international agencies, the Plant Protection authorities have not taken the trouble of launching even a campaign for creation of awareness of the havoc caused by handling the killer pesticides.
What is all the more intriguing about this worrisome situation is the indifferent attitude of progressive growers to the sad plight of the female farm workers, who have been contributing a great deal to their prosperity from cotton and other profit-yielding crops.