People are in a hurry to reach their destination -- as an assortment of cars, buses, pickups, two and three wheelers and what not whizz along the newly refurbished GT Road in Lahore. Each must go first, right way or not. An equal amount of frenzy is evident on the roadside, as one-room factories, auto workshops and snooker clubs open gates for the day’s business. There’s a surge of chaos but it’s all too familiar.

Off this wide road, close to Ring Road interchange, a narrow, dirt lane leads to a contrasting world in which a thick cloud of dust surrounds workers of different ages and gender that toil barefoot atop kilns, shove mounds of clay and haul heavy loads. This is where the building blocks for the new shopping malls, offices and residences are produced.

But the workers are oblivious of their contribution to modern Pakistan. Their lives are frozen in dark ages depicted only in epic films. They show no hope, desire, to change their circumstances. They look despondent, not optimistic.

This brick kiln in Lahore’s outskirts, Manawan, is one of the over 10,000 brick factories operating in Punjab of which only 6,300 are registered with the Labour department. These together provide employment to approximately 2.3million workers. Some 18,000 brick kilns operate in Pakistan, and employ about 4.5 million workers that work extra long hours for a paltry amount of money and sub-human life, according to data collected by Bonded Labour Liberation Front (BLLF), an organisation working towards the elimination of bonded labour in Pakistan.

As we get closer to the brick kiln site, it is obvious that the nine to ten month brick production cycle is underway. The 65-foot chimney is belching thick black smoke. Tractors, carrying mud or baked bricks, are on the go. Covered red dust, men are loading horse carts with bricks. Slightly away, rows and rows of unbaked bricks are covering the otherwise flat landscape. Men, women and their children (called pathera in brick kiln parlance) are squatting, barefoot and ungloved, rolling peras (balls of clay), packing them into a sanchas (moulds), turning them up-side down and then smashing them on the ground to form a rectangular, greyish-brown brick.

On any normal day, this action will be repeated a several hundred times -- from dawn to dusk. They will wake up early next morning and go to do the same backbreaking labour in dust and heat for six days a week.

"We started our day at mid-night," says middle-aged Hamida Bibi. By 10:30 in the morning, she, along with her seven family members, have already made about 2,000 bricks, and are ready for the second meal of the day of roti and daal.

Hamida Bibi is mother of eight children -- four daughter and four sons. Except for her youngest, four-year-old son -- who according to her is "too young to form bricks" -- and her two daughters -- who "prefer to stay waila (free)" -- the rest toil from before the sun rises till it sets. That is a total of "18 hours a day, six days a week".

For such arduous labour, the family gets paid roughly Rs500 for 1000 bricks, which is Rs388 less than the government stipulated rate of Rs888 for 1000 bricks.

"It is up to the owner what he pays us at the end of the week. The payment is always adjusted against the peshgi (advance) we have taken from him to meet our health and other emergency expenses over the years," she says.

To Hamida Bibi’s knowledge, her family owes the kiln owner a hefty Rs300,000. But she is clueless about what amount has been paid back and what is pending because nothing is on paper.

Bibi is not the only pathera stuck in this loan trap. Almost everyone in her workplace is in debt -- Anara Bibi owe Rs250,000 and Ramzan Rs300,000… The loan amount is always a rough estimation. "Somewhere around Rs250,000 to 300,000," they say in chorus. They shrug their shoulders when asked to show accounts or any other document because they have none.

The owner keeps his workers’ accounts in his own unique way -- to entrap them into servitude.

This is horrific abuse of minimum wage rate and, it is bonded labour, so kiln workers on daily wage cannot escape. According to BLLF, the average amount of money that the kiln worker owes his/her owner is Rs80,000. Also, under the law a kiln owner can only release an advance equal to or less than two weeks’ wages.

The munshi (supervisor) claims that although this brick kiln has been registered with the Labour department, the 150-plus workforce engaged in brick-making have not been listed with the Social Security department. Without the official registration, they cannot avail old-age pension, legal aid, marriage grant at the time of your daughter’s marriage, free medical care at social security hospitals or death grant.

Of these 150 workers, only a few labourers have CNIC.

Including munshis, tractor drivers and jalai (who fire and bake bricks) and bharai (who load and stack in kiln) workers, only 20 are on a monthly stipend of Rs12,000. They rest are on daily wage. Jalai workers usually perform two six-hour shifts in a day. For them, overtime is only a dream.

The brick kiln is a portrait of poverty. There are half-clad children everywhere, lingering aimlessly. They do not go to school. Some help their elders in the brick-making work. There are no health facilities nearby. "The nearest one charges Rs50 for a teeka (injection) and Rs50 for medicine. Add to this the transport charges," says Hamida Bibi. Most babies are delivered at home, except in case of complication.

The owner has provided the housing for kiln workers, where there is no light, no hygiene and no running water. They fill utensils with water when the tube-well is switched on every alternate day. They use the open fields to relieve themselves.

This is the slavery of our age. It is confining brick kiln labourers into poverty and servitude. Yet, the government has failed to respond to a scourge that is destroying lives today on this scale.