A different ball game

The city of Sialkot in the province of Punjab is a global hub of sports goods’ manufacturing with many leading international brands sourcing their products from here. Apart from sports goods, the city provides world class sportswear including tracksuits, karate suits, motorbikers’ suits and safety kits to the world. Surgical goods and leather products are other major items in the list of products shipped from here to overseas buyers. There is a local demand of these goods as well but the best quality does not reach the local markets.

Sialkot reportedly started with repair and production of cricket equipment such as wooden bats and hand-sewn cricket balls during the British rule. Today, it is known for housing skilled people adept in producing goods used in dozens of sports. Quite interestingly, many of these sports are not even played in the country. A visitor to the city will find craftsmen working on cricket bats and balls, rugby balls, badminton, squash and tennis rackets, basketball equipment, hockey sticks, hand-stitched soccer balls and what not, but at a very limited scale.

At the same time, mechanisation and new product development has also increased in Sialkot. With the improvements being made in athletic sports, experts now focus on scientific training which has also affected the development and improvement of its equipment. There is a ready demand for badminton, tennis and squash rackets made of fibre glass due to light weight and durability. So, the local industry in Sialkot is producing sports equipment made of fibre glass (carbon filter) and other reinforced plastic products. The technology used to produce thermo-bonded soccer balls is done by attaching the panels through heat.

With the help of this technology, companies can produce hundreds of thousands of soccer balls in a month - something one could not even think of before its inception. In the relatively older times, the dependence was overwhelmingly on skilled people who could stitch soccer balls with their hands either at factories or within the confines of their homes. Quite understandably, the output was quite low as compared to machines and the building blocks of the soccer balls were also a bit different. Stitching a ball is a very tedious work as the traditional soccer ball consists of 20 hexagonal and 12 pentagonal panels that must first be cut, and then joined together with 18 metres of yarn and 650 precision stitches.

Forward Sports is a Sialkot-based company adopted this new technology around 2013 and supplied thermo-bonded soccer balls for the FIFA World Cup held in Brazil in 2014. No doubt it was a big achievement on part of Pakistani company to win this order but a disturbing fact was that this innovation had come at a heavy cost. With the world shifting to machine-based soccer balls, the city had started losing export orders for hand-stitched balls by the start of this decade. Due to this reason, there was a huge loss of jobs and workers with skills to make hand-stitched balls became redundant. There are a few still engaged in this work but the scale is very limited because the traditional soccer balls are still being used locally.

Though these job losses affected both men and women, the latter were affected more because they could not just switch work like men, indulge in physical labour or go to other urban centres to find jobs. The fact they had mostly worked at home had limited their exposure to the world of work.

According to a research study conducted for Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF) during July 2012 by N.H Consultancy (Pvt) Ltd, alone in Sialkot district, approximately 16,000 home based female soccer stitchers became jobless because of advancements in the sports industry. This way, these women were at a high risk of losing their only option for earning livelihood.

This situation caught attention of international donors including UN agencies like UN Women, International Labour Organization (ILO), women rights organisation and local and international NGOs who started thinking on how to provide alternative livelihood to these women. It was a serious issue as many of these women were the main breadwinners for their families.

Fortunately for this affected lot, some initiatives were taken that yielded positive results. One such initiative was a welfare project titled ‘Integrated Support for Socioeconomic Rehabilitation of the Jobless/Vulnerable Women Home Based Soccer ball Stitchers’, supported by UN Women and executed by Baidarie-Sialkot. Baidarie took Sialkot Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SCCI) on board as it thought this collaboration would help these women know the practical tricks of trade, develop market linkages, learn skills according to the demands of the job market and explore their entrepreneurial qualities. “We have worked on different projects launched for the same purpose and are still at work because the problem is a big one and recurring,” says Arshid Mehmood Mirza, Executive Director, Baidarie. He informs that the technological advancement/mechanisation is a good thing and has to be adopted. “No doubt mechanisation renders people jobless but this doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world. Hard working and dedicated workers can be adjusted in other jobs through proper planning and trainings. Many people who were dedicated to work discovered their true potential as entrepreneurs after passing through testing times,” he adds.

Razia Sultana is a beneficiary of a Baidaries supported programme. She tells the scribe that her husband once worked as a soccer ball stitcher and earned a monthly income of Rs 15,000. This was not enough for the family to survive so she also decided to join him. She learnt how to stitch soccer balls and did this work for around five years. Things became difficult for the couple as the sub-contractor they were working with told them there will not be enough work available from then onwards. It was for the first time that they came to know about the shift from hand-stitched soccer balls to machine-made soccer balls. Razia became stressed after losing her job.

It was during those days that she got in touch with Baidarie’s team that was looking for deserving women who could benefit from a project supported by UN Women. Under the programme, she was trained in manufacturing of gloves of different kinds that were in demand in the local and global markets.

Razia narrates her story, “This was the moment when I set up a gloves stitching unit at my home. Baidarie supported me in having financial loan to purchase five single-needle industrial machines. I engaged five women trainees cum workwomen and began stitching gloves of different kinds. My earning came as Rs 10,000 per month within no time and the good thing was that my co-workers were earning almost the same amount per month.

I also got 10-day training in E-Marketing at SCCI created my business page on Facebook under the name of ‘Spiza Sports’. I also developed website spizasports.com, registered my company with SCCI and got National Taxation Number (NTN) as well. The first success in my E-Marketing venture came when I secured an online order of 300 sports uniforms from the USA. Over the time we had diversified and developed skills to stitch uniforms also. We completed the production and shipped out the consignment in time. This was our first remarkable achievement. Now we register all of our business transactions, income, expenditure and profits in a formal way. Eight women are working with me and my personal income is above Rs 40,000 per month.

Samina Kausar is another beneficiary who lives in village Jourian Kalan situated at a distance of 10 kilometres from Sialkot City. She got married 14 years ago. She was enlisted as a beneficiary of Adidas supported ‘Women Empowerment Programme’ and got training in gloves stitching. She started her work but was not able to generate enough income to meet the needs of her family so she decided to do some business on a better scale. She knew it was just a dream in the absence of required finances but she did not lose hope.

After receiving training on financial literacy provided by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), she opened her account in Finca Bank to deposit her saving there. She also secured loan of Rs 25000 for ‘Khud Kifalat Programme’ of Sialkot Chamber of Commerce and Industry to purchase raw material for her manufacturing unit. After getting further training in stitching of boxing gloves, she was linked up with the industry for getting regular orders. She set up her gloves stitching unit enterprises. Currently she is running a small business unit where 10 industrial stitching machines have been installed under her supervision and 10 women are working.

While Razia and Samina found alternatives for their livelihood, there are many women who are still struggling to make ends meet. Female home based workers who are the sole breadwinners of their families often work remotely due to lack of resources and social constraints. These women especially need to be catered in this regard. In a developing country like Pakistan, certain considerations should be taken while moving towards industrial development. If mechanisation is the need of the hour, it is also necessary to create alternate opportunities for labour force which most of the sports cottage industry in cities like Sialkot relies upon.