Mansoor Qutub
On 26th December 2016, the story of 10-year-old Tayyaba made rounds on social media, with images of her bruised hands and face. She was a maid at a judge’s place in Islamabad, whose wife had brutally tortured her for a missing broom in their house. They burnt the 10-year-old’s hands and wrongfully detained her in a storeroom. The couple, later was sentenced by the Supreme court for a one-year jail term on charges of “child neglect”. Surprisingly, the couple was not sentenced for the assault. Later, the couple submitted an appeal for revision of the sentence to the Supreme Court but they were given a three-year sentence, instead of one, and a 500,000 Rupee fine.
The Guardian published another story of a 13-year-old girl in Bahria Town, Rahim Yar Khan by the name of Bano, who was thrown out of the window by the owners, breaking her backbone with irreparable damage to the spine. She died 6-months later. No formal court proceedings ensued, because the family of the girl was paid 300,000 Pakistan Rupees, as hush money. This was a classic case of abject poverty, where the family took money from the perpetrators and pardoned them.
According to Wage Indicator 2019, 73% of the total workforce in Pakistan is engaged in the informal sector of domestic work. People working in the domestic sector are aged between 15 to 64. Domestic workers are either paid in cash, or in kind. Of the total women labour force in Pakistan, 74% work in domestic settings. Unfortunately, of these 74% domestic workers, 29.1% are unpaid. (Punjab’s urban and rural areas, reported by the Punjab Commission on Status of Women in June, 2019.)
Pakistan does not have laws overseeing the domestic workers of Pakistan. Even though the Punjab Government has passed the Punjab Domestic Workers Act in the January of 2019, it remains implementable only in Punjab while the rest of the country is still awaiting any legislation in this regard.
The Punjab Domestic Workers Act defines the minimum age of domestic workers as 15, and for heavy workload as 18. The Act also places a minimum wage restriction on the employers, and equal pay for gender equality, as well. The Punjab Domestic Workers Act gives ample rights to workers, by allowing for paid leaves, maternity benefits and medical examinations of the Domestic Workers to ensure better health of the Domestic Workers.
The Punjab Government has, in this regard set up a committee to oversee the clauses of the Act, and taking complaints from the Workers against the employers, if any. However, it is difficult to establish whether the Act will be policed upon, and if the legislation will actually amount to something. Domestic workers will not be able to report the incidents, because they are not aware of their own rights. For this purpose, they need to be educated properly, and empowered enough to know their rights.
This Act must also extend to the remote areas of Punjab, but also must be extended to the whole of Pakistan, where rights of these communities can be upheld in a proper manner.
