In August this year, 22 families working at a brick kiln at Jia Bagga village in Lahore demanded from their owner to pay them minimum wage as per government rules for kiln workers.

Sharif Masih, 40, a worker and father of five, took the lead and forwarded their demand to the owner. He was hopeful that the owner would give serious consideration to their demand. Instead, the owner was outraged; tortured some workers, increased the peshgi amount by Rs25,000, and kidnapped his son, Amir Masih.

"He sold out 10 families to another kiln owner. He was paid peshgi and he allowed them to leave. It took me three months and the help of BLLF to get my son released," Sharif Masih tells TNS.  "I went to the police, labour department, and courts. We demanded a basic human right but no state institution was ready to support me against the brick kiln owner."

According to Syeda Ghulam Fatima of Bonded Labour Liberation Front (BLLF), more than 50 per cent of brick kiln workers do not have identity cards. "There are laws and rulings of the Supreme Court which forbid owners from paying peshgi of more than 15 days to workers but owners do not abide by it. They pay them advance and get their thumb impression on a stamp paper. They produce these stamp papers in court as proof of payment of hundreds of thousands. Owners have never been punished for this illegal practice."

The Constitution of Pakistan prohibits slavery, forced labour, and child labour. Pakistan also introduced Bonded Labour (Abolition) Act in 1992 followed by a decision of the Supreme Court. On paper, the law abolished bonded labour, terminated bonded labourers’ past peshgis, and proposed harsh punishments for those engaged in bonded labour.

Under the Act, district vigilance committees (DVC) will be formed to look into the issue of bonded labour and help administration implement the law. After 22 years of implementation of the Act, DVCs have not been constituted in most districts and even where they exist, they have not been able to effectively monitor or curb bonded labour.

In 2001, the federal government also approved a National Policy and Plan of Action for the Abolition of Bonded Labour and Rehabilitation of Freed Bonded Labourers (NPPA) with the main purpose of laying out strategic plan to achieve the abolition of forced and bonded labour and to conduct a national survey on bonded labourers. The policy and plan of action approved restructuring and revitalisation DVCs under the District Nazim to help release and rehabilitate bonded labour with the assistance of local judiciary and other authorities.

The Punjab government declared brick kilns an industry in 2001. The labour department started registering brick kilns under the Factories Act 1934, the same year, but the Punjab government has not been able to complete registration of kilns in the province.

The Punjab labour department has so far registered 5,922 brick kilns under the Act but brick kiln owners association puts the number at over 10,000 in Pakistan. "In books, brick kiln workers come under formal labour if a brick kiln is registered under Factories Act 1934 and all labour laws are applied on them," says Dr Jawed Iqbal Gill, Director Integrated Programme for Elimination of Child Labour and Bonded Labour in Punjab.

"But as owners of brick kilns are influential and many of them are politicians, they get away with it. I admit that bonded labour and child labour exists at brick kilns," Gill adds.

Minimum wage for brick kiln workers in Punjab is Rs888 per 1000 bricks, according to Gill, but it is not paid anywhere in the province. "The labour department has its limitations; we do not have enough manpower to monitor all kilns. Punjab was the first province to adopt Bonded Labour System Abolition Act 1992 after the 18th Amendment" he informs.

"We have proposed some amendments in the Act because under the old Act no department takes ownership for implementation of the Act. We have been trying to give labour department its ownership. DVCs have also become active after SC’s 2013 ruling of registration of all brick kiln workers with the social security department. But, so far, these DVCs have not come up with a single case of bonded labour," he adds.

The SC issued orders in July 2013 to the four provinces to register brick kiln labourers under the social security department and bound owners to pay six per cent of workers’ salary to social security departments. Punjab has so far managed to issue social security cards to 8,000 works out of 2.3 million. In Sindh, the labour department has registered only 750 brick kilns.

A senior official of the department of social security in Multan tells TNS that since 2007, the department has issued 970 cards to brick kiln workers. "There are around 1000 brick kilns in Multan but the owners are not ready to pay their contribution for issuance of cards. We have sent scores of cases to local magistrates of non-payment of dues against owners but they have no time to hear such cases," he says, adding, "We have DVCs in all three districts of Multan division. Local MPAs are also members of them and most of them are brick kiln owners. Do you think they would allow us to implement laws," he asks.

He informs that there are only six social security officers deputed in the division. "They are not given travelling allowance. Do you think they would visit brick kilns in rural areas?"

Ahmed Niazi, a lawyer based in Multan, has represented many cases of brick kiln workers in courts and has got many freed. He says unless the owners are punished, things will not change.

Interestingly, except Punjab, no other province has adopted Bonded Labour System Abolition Act, 1992 after the 18th Amendment. "It means that bonded labour is legal in other provinces," says Zulfiqar Shah of Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (PILER).