'The Government should issue social security cards to home based workers take steps to end terrorism and create peace in the region.' Home based women workers put forward these demands in the Women's Assembly of Home Based Workers, organised by the Women Workers Help Line on Monday.
Gathered to highlight issues being faced women workforce, the participants claimed that they were being ignored despite of contributing a lot to the country's economy. Further, home based women workers urged the government of Pakistan to ratify the ILO convention 177. 'The Government must provide social security to home based women workers,' they said and demanded that the government must end contract system, provide pension facility and scholarships for their children, register them as workers and announce minimum wages working hours for them.
Speaking on the occasion, the Director, Women Workers Help Line, Bushra Khaliq said that there are about 20 million Home Based Workers working in Pakistan, out of which 12 million are women. She said that the informal sector in Pakistan particularly with reference to home based female workers and they had expanded fast due to the inflow of rural migrants, which caused a shortage of job opportunities in the modem urban sector, both for the rural migrants and urban dwellers.
She also stated that many of the home based workers work in the sector of stitching, embroidery, shoe making, leather work, dry fruit peeling, jewellery making, decorative and bangle making. Almost women, working in these sectors are earning only Rs 20-40 per day against 12-16 hr laborious work.
These women are the most unprivileged part of the society lacking legal recognition of their work. Further, they are working in isolation and have no rights as workers. 'There is no authentic data available about the size of home based workers,' she lamented. Furthermore, 'Macroeconomic conditions are inducing women to work informally to meet day-to-day expenditures, irrespective of their wish to work,' Khaliq said.