By Abdul Rahman Malik,
The home-based workers are contributing a lot to the economy of Pakistan as they have been doing tremendous job locally by producing homemade items such as needlework, embroidery, quilt making, from the rural women, pottery, carpets, caps and tailoring etc.
These home-based skilled persons work day and night in order to produce the huge volume of handicrafts, household items, decoration products and toys for children to earn their living usually from hand to mouth as the lack of marketing Skills and the technology curtails their earning potential.
Education brings a lasting change and enriches the skills of people to bring innovations in their work by researching and exploring the markets to market such items which are the most demanded ones.These artisans and skilled women get the golden chance to showcase their skills in the cultural events organized by any development organizations, cultural departments and fairs of Sufi saints where stalls are set up to attract people from all walks of life to purchase their handicrafts at high price owing to high cost of travelling and raw materials.
The constant deprivation from the minimum wage policy, life insurance and health insurance policy prompted the home-based workers both male and female to stage protests against their demands since they are not being given their due rights as safeguarded by the state.
The Protests were supported by the human rights and women rights NGOs to influence the government to devise the homes based workers policy since their plight is miserable and calls for immediate government attention to address their issues and come up with relief packages in order recognize their services for income generation.
However, the Sindh government took lead by becoming the first province ever to have adopted home based Workers policy and passed the Sindh Home-based Workers Act 2018. The Sindh government became first Province in Asia to have adopted home-based workers policy and legislative framework for the home-based workers that will likely benefit these skilled persons Since they have been attached to these professions for decades and inherited these skills from their ancestors and still keeping it alive even in the modern era.
With the passage of landmark Sindh Home-based Workers act 2018, the appreciations and felicitations start pouring in from the home-based workers, the organizations working for civilian rights such as Home Net, Piler and others.
The development organizations were of the view that Syed Murad Ali Shah has expedited the implementation of home-based workers with the support of Law minister Zia Lanjar and Labour minister Syed Nisar Hussain Shah. The News brought a great smile of joy on the faces of the home-based workers since they were struggling for their rights for a long time to avail the essential state services and the passage of act gave a sigh of relief to them.
The passage of Sindh Home-based workers Act 2018 is just a platform and precedence as we expect from the federal government to adopt the national home-based workers’ policy so that the provinces should implement the policy in letter and spirit.The Provinces should legislate the policy framework for the workers and give market access to these home-based workers to sell their services and products on competitive rates that may benefit them especially the women working at home.
This will at least contribute to the income generation and fixing minimum wages to protect the rights of these workers.
The Provincial Governments such as Punjab, Baluchistan and KPK governments must come forward on this important issue envisage the policy framework for the skilled home-based workers as practised in developed nations of the world.
There is strong need to establish skills development centres in rural areas as per the existing skills of rural women to help improve their economic condition and opening the opportunities for their work and income generation so that they may support their families and earn a respectable earning by working from home.
Working from home is getting popularity throughout the world as the technology has bridged the gap between the countries and opened infinite opportunities to avail from especially for the well educated and skilled individuals to earn their living through freelancing. Though, freelancing is opposite to full-time job yet the talented, educated and experts in IT may earn thrice as compared to their full-time job.
The Ministry of IT and Telecom has taken lead to introduce Digiskills.pk- a joint initiative of Ministry of IT and Telecom’s initiative “Ignite” and Virtual University Pakistan to impart free skill bases training to the youth through online learning and the YouTube channel. They have already trained their batches in freelancing, Digital marketing, AutoCAD, creative writing, Digital Literacy, E-Commerce Management, QuickBooks, WordPress, SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
This is a great initiative to impart skills to the Youth free of cost and enable them to get jobs working as freelancers, digital marketers and Accountants.
The Ministry of Labour, SMEDA, NAVTEC may come up with a similar project to build the skills of home-based workers in their respective fields i.e. Tailoring and design making, fashion designing, blanket and quilt making, Child toys making, Caps, Strings and Ajrak Industry, Carpet making, earthen vessels making at grassroots level to transform their skills into income generation.
The government should come up with small-scale loans for these skilled domestic workers through Commercial as well as Microfinance Banks so that these deprived communities may avail the financial assistance to set up their stalls and shops in villages, small towns and Cities. There should be weekly, fortnightly and Monthly, Quarterly and Annual events to help promote these handicrafts and attract thousands of prospective customers.
This will not only help these workers boost up their income but also give them access to markets enabling them to maximize their production capacity.
The organizations such as SMEDA ,NAVTEC , STEVTA , Ministry of Social Welfare’s Commercial and Vocational centers may prove instrumental in making this mammoth task possible and engage field force to conduct survey and register the home-based workers so that they may be provided with services such as Health, Security, Wages and protection from falling prey to profiteers who get the assigned work done on cheaper rates and earn inflated income themselves .
In Sindh, SRSO had done a tremendous job under UC based program “Success” and revitalized the income ability of the rural women through income generation ability. The project was a great success and calls for continuing such project to impart skill based training to the women already doing similar tasks at a small scale to further their techniques.
The training and access to market will engage these workers in the workplace and they could increase their earning potential if given proper advice and guidance.
It is high time that the Government of Pakistan must adopt the Legislative framework for the Home-based workers unlike Sindh Government so that the age-long issues surrounding domestic skilled workers may be addressed on priority so that they could avail the same level of facilities.
The Federal Government must come up with policy, making it binding upon all the provinces to frame laws for Home-based workers so that their job-related issues may be solved on priority and they could lead a prosperous life.
