Friday, October 05, 2012

Another brick in the wall

Overburdened by loans, generation after generation of Pakistani brick-makers, totalling about 4.5 million spread across 18,000 kilns around the country, toil for nothing more than the promise of freedom. Ata Muhammad and his wife work for 18 hours a day at a kiln in the outskirts of Lahore, where they are paid 450 rupees (roughly $4.80) per 1,000 bricks, irrespective of how long it takes to complete the task. For every 400-rupee payment that Ata is entitled to, the kiln owner deducts 150 rupees (about $1.60) to settle a loan he claims he granted Ata’s father, though Ata has no memory of this.

According to estimates by the Centre for the Improvement of Working Conditions and Environment found that “a family of two adults and three children can make 500-1200 bricks a day depending on their skill and physical health.” The minimum wage set by the government is 665.7 rupees (or seven dollars) per 1,000 bricks.

The tasks include fetching mud from two or three kilometres away, soaking it in water, molding it into bricks, transporting the finished product to the kiln and finally baking and grading each brick. In case of inclement weather or illness the workers earn nothing and are forced deeper into debt, begging for loans from their employers who are happy to extend the line of credit, which acts as a noose around the necks of many workers. Once indebted, workers cannot leave until they pay off their outstanding loans.

The loans, known as an ‘advance’, or ‘peshgi’ in Urdu, are the root of all kiln workers’ woes, according to Ghulam Fatima, secretary general of the Bonded Labour Liberation Front (BLLF), a rights group working to end bonded labour in Pakistan. She says the kiln owners extend loans for occasions such as marriage, births and deaths, in an effort to tie the workers more tightly into servitude.

Kiln workers carry price tags equivalent to their outstanding loans. By paying this amount, owners can effectively ‘purchase’ workers from one another. If a worker runs away from a kiln, he is traced with the help of police and local politicians and all the money spent during this exercise is then added to his or her outstanding debt.

No comments: