Call for policy on home-based workers

LAHORE
CIVIL Society Organisations (CSO) during a joint a press conference at the Lahore Press Club, Monday, demanded Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif to announce Home-Based Workers (HBWs) policy on the upcoming International Women’s Day that falls on March 8.
The CSO representatives said the Women Empowerment Package 2012 had promised a policy for HBWs but unfortunately the Punjab government had failed to fulfil this commitment. This had compromised the interests of millions of HBWs and put them in a helpless situation, they said.
Speaking on the occasion, Ume Laila Azhar said the term home-based worker was used to refer to workers who carry out remunerated work within their homes or the surrounding grounds.
These workers, she said, formed a significant proportion of the overall workforce but did not even have access to basic human rights.
She said the International Labour Organisation (ILO)’s Home Work Convention, 1996 (No. 177); the Kathmandu Declaration of 2000 and the South Asian Regional Plan of Action for Home-based Workers, 2007 called for their identification and recognition, mainstreaming into national economies, formulation of national policies, integration into national and regional markets and raising of their visibility, voices and concerns.
She urged the Punjab government to approve the HBW policy and legislation without any further delay.
She informed the media that the policy had been finalised and was simply awaiting the Punjab Cabinet approval.
It was imperative that the HBWs should be covered under the social protection mechanisms in place and that the provincial government should devise a strategy to make it possible, she stressed.
Despite Pakistan being a signatory to various international agreements on HBWs, a majority of them remain unidentified, invisible, unrecognised, voiceless and neglected. It is also an issue of women’s rights as an overwhelming majority of HBWs comprised women.
Khalid Mehmood said

the unjustifiable delay in the approval of the HBW policy and its adoption was creating uneasiness among the HBWs and the organisations working for their rights. He said even the Punjab Labour policy, which had been finalised in April 2014, had not been implemented in the province.
Mehnaz Rafi, a political worker and a social activist, said it was a high time that the government should come up with a legal framework for the HBWs’ protection.
She said though the Punjab government was coming up with a new Women Empowerment Package on the International Women’s Day on March 8, it had not yet fulfilled the commitments it had made in the previous package announced in 2012. The approval of HBWs policy was one just promise which could not be fulfilled despite the passage of three years, she added. The Punjab CM should announce the approval and adoption of the HBWs policy on International Women’s Day, she demanded. Aima Mehmood said the HBWs issue was a core labour issue and all the trade unions strongly demanded the approval of the HBWs policy as well as the Punjab Labour Policy.
Jalwat Ali said it was the HBWs’ right to be recognised as workers. Shaheena Kausar said that HBWs should have recognition of rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining as per ILO Convention 87.