Pakistan is among the few countries in the world where slavery in the form of bonded labour exists even in the 21st century. A slavery index report, released by Walk Free Foundation in October 2013, placed Pakistan on top of the countries where slavery, including bonded and forced labour practices, are rampant.
One can contest the ranking accorded to Pakistan in this report; however, there is no denying the existence of bonded labour practices in the country because Pakistan has been accepting the International Labour Organization’s (ILO’s) technical assistance, to address this issue for several decades.
Like in many other countries, erosion of labour rights is on the rise in Pakistan, where lack of compliance with the eight Core Labour Standards is common, leave alone implementation of all the 36 ILO Conventions ratified by Pakistan.
Both global and domestic factors such as the absence of democracy and unfair trade practices have pushed trade unions to the margin. Only a tiny number (3 to 5 per cent) of the workforce is unionised.
In a developing country like Pakistan, where two-thirds of its population survives below the poverty line and a large number of workers are without any protection, bonded labour is likely to exist in many sectors of the economy. Specifically, a series of Rapid Assessments, jointly conducted by the Ministry of Labour and the ILO in 2003, identified the prevalence of bonded labour in sectors such as agriculture, brick kilns, carpet weaving, fisheries, mines, glass bangles and begging.
Since then, agriculture and brick kilns have remained the targets of state and non-state interventions, due to the nature and size of the work force in these two sectors.
According to the latest available data in Labour Force Survey 2010–11, of the 57 million labour force in the country, about 69 per cent or 39 million workers are living in rural areas and vulnerable to exploitation. Construction sector employees, including those in brick kilns, constitute about seven per cent of the labour force or four million people.
There is no official data available on the number of brick kilns and the workers in the industry in Pakistan; estimates suggest that there are more than 10,000 kilns in the country, employing thousands of workers.
Interestingly, the current debate and actions on the issue of bondage emanated from the brick-kiln sector because it was the complaints of bonded brick-kiln workers that moved the Supreme Court of Pakistan in 1989 to declare compulsory work against peshgi (advances) as illegal and to ask the government to make laws to bring bondage to an end.
