Bonded Labour In Pakistan—A Humanitarian Crisis

Slav­ery is a dread­ful con­cept which is con­sid­ered unac­cept­able in most parts of the world — yet in Pak­istan, mil­lions of peo­ple con­tin­ue to live in bondage, forced to suf­fer sub­hu­man con­di­tions and dai­ly humil­i­a­tions at the whim of those who ‘rule’ their lives. Accord­ing to a sur­vey con­duct­ed by Asian Devel­op­ment Bank (ADB) and Inter­na­tion­al Labour Organ­i­sa­tion (ILO) in the ear­ly nineties, there were 1.7 mil­lion peo­ple in bond­ed labour in Pak­istan. How­ev­er, the Human Rights Com­mis­sion of Pak­istan (HRCP) report­ed that the num­ber exceed­ed 2 mil­lion. Respond­ing to inter­na­tion­al pres­sure, the Gov­ern­ment of Pak­istan pro­mul­gat­ed the “Bond­ed Labour Abo­li­tion Act 1992”, under which a vig­i­lance com­mit­tee was to be imme­di­ate­ly set up in every dis­trict of the coun­try to mon­i­tor whether bond­ed labour was being enforced any­where and to work for the reha­bil­i­ta­tion of erst­while bond­ed labour­ers.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, none of the work man­dat­ed under the said Act has been car­ried out to this day. No case has ever been reg­is­tered under this Act against any land­lord sub­ject­ing cit­i­zens to bond­ed labour. Accord­ing to some NGOs deal­ing with human rights cas­es, more than 3 mil­lion bond­ed labour­ers have been freed through High Courts and Police under Sec­tion 491 of the Crim­i­nal Pro­ce­dure Code (CrPC). This law is meant for ille­gal con­fine­ment and not specif­i­cal­ly for bond­ed labour, there­fore the peo­ple freed under it could nev­er receive any com­pen­sa­tion for their reha­bil­i­ta­tion, as it would be in case of imple­men­ta­tion of the Bond­ed Labour Abo­li­tion Act 1992. Near Hyder­abad, there are 7 to 8 pri­vate Hari camps where erst­while bond­ed labour­ers live out of fear that their for­mer land­lords might round them up and take them back as bond­ed labour on their farms.

In 1998, in dis­trict Badin, Matli city, land­lords Ghu­lam Qadir Mari and Mureed Khan Mari report­ed­ly attacked a Hari camp (camp of Sind­hi farm­ers who work for land­lords) with their per­son­al force and took back 108 work­ers in trucks, against which civ­il soci­ety launched a strong protest. Inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions also got involved and pres­sured the gov­ern­ment for the release of the Haris. Then Senior Super­in­ten­dent Police Hyder­abad, AD Khawa­ja took a spe­cial team to dis­trict Sang­har and got 107 out of 108 Haris released. One of the cap­tives, who was vocal against the land­lords, was killed.

In the year 2009, inside Azad­na­gar Hari Camp, Tan­do Hyder, an influ­en­tial land­lord named Abdur Rah­man Mari report­ed­ly took his per­son­al force and attacked the Haris who were liv­ing there tem­porar­i­ly. The Haris sur­round­ed that force, cap­tured the landlord’s son and hand­ed him over to the police. How­ev­er, the police end­ed up releas­ing him and, for obvi­ous rea­sons, failed to issue any penal­ty.

The above named Abdur Rah­man Mari hap­pens to be the same per­son who, in 1996 near Jhu­do city, dis­trict Mir­purkhas, had abduct­ed 13 farm work­ers belong­ing to the Man­nu Bheel fam­i­ly. This inci­dent was wide­ly report­ed in the nation­al and inter­na­tion­al media. Bheel was not present him­self but his whole fam­i­ly had been abduct­ed. He con­tin­ued protest­ing at Hyder­abad Press Club for 8 years but to no avail, as the where­abouts of his fam­i­ly have not been traced till this day. Some sources say all his fam­i­ly mem­bers have been killed. On the oth­er hand, Abdur Rah­man Mari claims that Man­nu Bheel owed him a debt of 30 thou­sand rupees, to escape pay­ment of which he staged a dra­ma of his family’s abduc­tion!

When­ev­er one talks to exploita­tive land­lords about the issue of bond­ed labour in the province of Sindh (where it is most preva­lent), they insist that the farm­ers work­ing for them are under their debt and are there­fore bound to pay back what they owe. If the Haris are not in a posi­tion to pay back the mon­ey, they must con­tin­ue work­ing on the land­lords’ farms and earn it off. How­ev­er, in most cas­es this traps the Haris and their fam­i­lies in a vicious cycle of crush­ing pover­ty and a nev­er-end­ing bur­den of debt.

How unimag­in­able would it be if our house­hold elec­tric­i­ty bill was to exceed a cer­tain fig­ure, and owing to our inabil­i­ty to pay it back, the Water and Pow­er Devel­op­ment Author­i­ty (WAPDA) would take away our fam­i­ly mem­bers to keep them in con­fine­ment till the pay­ment is made! Land­lords, busi­ness­men and bureau­crats them­selves often owe large amounts in debt to agri­cul­tur­al and oth­er banks and are also tax default­ers. Yet they refuse to write off even a sin­gle rupee from the rel­a­tive­ly mea­ger amounts report­ed­ly bor­rowed by their farm work­ers. Imag­ine how the land­lords would feel if their chil­dren were to be abduct­ed and kept in vir­tu­al impris­on­ment for years for the recov­ery of their fathers’ loans!

And as for social work­ers and human rights activists who speak out for the rights of these Haris, they are often labeled as for­eign agents who are ene­mies of the coun­try and wish to dam­age its econ­o­my by ruin­ing rela­tions between the land­lords and their work­ers. The pow­er these land­lords wield can­not be under­es­ti­mat­ed as they make up a major­i­ty of the deci­sion-mak­ers and politi­cians in this coun­try.
Veer­ji Kohli, a social activist from Sindh, is a spe­cial­ist in the issue of bond­ed labour and has han­dled numer­ous such cas­es. He reports that the treat­ment of bond­ed labour­ers is appalling, but women in par­tic­u­lar end up suf­fer­ing the most. Apart from the phys­i­cal abuse that is rou­tine­ly met­ed out, women are also sub­ject­ed to extreme sex­u­al abuse.

Baba Salahud­din Hari Camp’s dweller, 37-year old Shri­mati Meer­an Kohli nar­rat­ed that she was 23 when she and her fam­i­ly were sold for the sec­ond time to a land­lord of dis­trict Sang­har. To pre­vent them from plot­ting escape the landlord’s man­agers sep­a­rat­ed the females from the males, not allow­ing them to see each oth­er for months at a stretch. Kohli nar­rates that she was guard­ed vig­i­lant­ly around the clock, and despite being engaged was pre­vent­ed from being mar­ried as the land­lord did not want to lose her as a work­er. Dur­ing this time she was raped repeat­ed­ly, result­ing in her giv­ing birth to 3 sons out of wed­lock. By the time she was final­ly freed through the High Court orders under sec­tion 491 CrPC, she had turned 37 and the men who had raped her refused to acknowl­edge her sons as their off­spring.

This issue of bond­ed labour has been in exis­tence in Pak­istan for sev­er­al decades. Although more than 3 mil­lion bond­ed labour­ers have been freed to date, our gov­ern­ment and social insti­tu­tions have failed to take any sol­id steps in set­tling this issue. The Con­sti­tu­tion of Pak­istan, CrPC, Unit­ed Nations’ Uni­ver­sal Dec­la­ra­tion of Human Rights and ILO’s inter­na­tion­al con­ven­tions- are all anti-slav­ery. In par­tic­u­lar, the ILO’s Con­ven­tion 29 has been named as “Forced Labour Con­ven­tion 1930” to which Pak­istan is a sig­na­to­ry. It lays down minute details of the ways to tack­le the bond­ed labour issue, from the abo­li­tion of bond­ed labour to the future treat­ment of erst­while bond­ed labour­ers. It also makes the exac­tion of bond­ed labour a penal offence for which ade­quate pun­ish­ment has to be strict­ly enforced by the gov­ern­ment.

In spite of this why does the state machin­ery not take any action against the exac­tion of bond­ed labour in Pak­istan? Is it because the vic­tims are not influ­en­tial, or their finan­cial and social stand­ing is low, or because the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of bond­ed labour­ers are non-Mus­lim?

Most Haris liv­ing in camps are indige­nous dwellers of Sindh and Pun­jab who have lived there for thou­sands of years and are affil­i­at­ed with the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor. There­fore their only source of liveli­hood is farm­ing. Dri­ving these farm­ers out of their lands to rid them of bond­ed labour and thus bring­ing their lives to a stand­still is no viable and per­ma­nent solu­tion to this long-stand­ing prob­lem.

The gov­ern­ment needs to ensure that the work­ing rela­tions between the Haris and land­lords are just enough so the Haris do not need to escape from their own farms. Pro­vid­ing them with this secu­ri­ty will allow them to apply their farm­ing knowl­edge and agri­cul­tur­al exper­tise to the ben­e­fit of the coun­try and enable them to work to their fullest poten­tial with­out any fear, instead of hav­ing to sit idly in Hari camps. All this will not only make Pak­istan progress, but will also serve to increase rev­enue for the coun­try. Our agri­cul­ture sec­tor must be tru­ly turned into and thus declared a bond­ed labour-free zone so that our rep­u­ta­tion improves inter­na­tion­al­ly. In this way we will have bet­ter trad­ing rela­tions with the rest of the world and be able to mar­ket our local goods in glob­al mar­kets. Clos­ing our eyes to prob­lems will not con­ceal the real­i­ty from our nation and the rest of the world.

In this fast-pro­gress­ing world, Pak­istan now has some 4 mil­lion peo­ple liv­ing in bond­ed labour, as con­sis­tent crim­i­nal neg­li­gence and denial of this grave issue by suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments has only served to increase the num­ber of bond­ed labour­ers. The Gov­ern­ment of Pak­istan, all polit­i­cal par­ties and demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions includ­ing the media and oth­er forums have a major respon­si­bil­i­ty to play their due role in root­ing out the men­ace of bond­ed labour.

All pro­gres­sive cit­i­zens of Pak­istan who are against the sub­hu­man prac­tice of slav­ery need to come for­ward to help per­ma­nent­ly put an end to this issue. We all must work togeth­er to erad­i­cate this pre­vail­ing shame­ful prob­lem in which mil­lions of our coun­try­men and women are trapped.