HomeNet Pakistan has held a Launching Ceremony for its new project titled “Empowerment of women Home based workers (HBWs) and Excluded Groups in Pakistan.
The project focuses on the integrated approach to economically empower 5000 home based workers and excluded groups in Sindh. Over all objectives revolves around advocacy with government of Sindh for the effective implementation of HBWs policy and adoption of legislation ensuring their registration, strengthening and enhancing HBWs and excluded groups through skills and capacity development to acquire social security/ micro-finance / market outreach.
Speakers included Gulfaam Nabi Memon, Director Labour Department, Musarat Jabeen Director Women Development Department (WDD), Karamat Ali from PILER, Rana Ansar Member Provincial Assembly Sindh, Ms. Ume Laila Azhar, Executive Director HomeNet Pakistan, Mahnaz Rahman Resident Director Aurat Foundation, Shah Mohammad Shah, Vice Commissioner Sindh Employment Social Security Institute (SESSI), Farhat Fatima from PILER and Naheed Syed from HomeNet Pakistan.
Naheed Syed discussed overall objectives and goals of HomeNet Pakistan for the empowerment of homebased workers. She said that HomeNet Pakistan’s overall mandate is to work for women in informal sector.
Ume Laila Executive Director HomeNet Pakistan enlighten the participants on many issues of HBWs which have been the core part of different projects of HBWs. She said that after getting approval of the policy on HBWs, our focus now is to work on proper legislation for home based workers. She also emphasized on the importance of a women economic empowerment council (WEE) for the better economic conditions of HBWs. She further added that UN Women is also doing efforts to form a high level platform for economic empowerment of women which will open new avenues to women entrepreneurs as well as HBWs. She suggested that WDD should take a lead for this council.
Mehwish Maria of UNWomen told that Skill development and financial literacy trainings for HBWs will be conducted under this programme. We have collaborated with Labour department and assisting them to digitalize the registration process for HBWs. They may develop website or a mobile application for registration process. Microfinance institute are also in loop to develop new products that suits HBWs.
Karamat Ali from PILER talked about policy implementation for HBWs. He stressed the need to universalize social security schemes for all workers including HBWs. For effective policy and implementation he suggested to continuously put pressures on government departments and ask them to give a timeframe for the registration process of workers. Civil society should act as proactive support. He said that Constitution of Pakistan’s article 28 addresses the issue of policy implementation for workers and under the article 29 the Governor is bound to report every year on it.
Ms. Rana Ansar MPA MQM showed full support to the issues of HBWs. She informed that many industries have been closed due to downfall of economy including the small businesses run by women. There is a need to revitalize it all and policies should be women business oriented. Women parliamentarians despite all difference in parties, are united on women’s issues and always support each other on policies/laws related to women.
Musarrat Jabeen of WDD told that WDD is working on interest free small loans schemes which starts from 50 thousands and these projects are in place in Mirpurkhas and Sukkur. 155 women have benefited from this scheme so far. With the collaboration of Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) WDD has initiated a number of projects for skills development and livelihood trainings.
Director of Labor Department Gulfam Nabi Memon informed that our department has demanded for allocation of separate budget in annual development plan (ADP) for data collection of HBWs and we are hopeful that in the upcoming budge it will we incorporated. Occupational health and safety issues have also been considered in this plan.
Farhat Fatima talking about the ILO convention C100 explained the equal remuneration for men and women workers for work of equal value and convention C111 which explains discrimination (Employment and occupation). She informed that Constitution of Pakistan also guarantee equal opportunities and rights for both men and women. But unfortunately there is grave violation of these laws at all level in our country. In these circumstances women HBWs are more vulnerable to all kinds of discrimination/violence
Mahnaz Rahman said that with the support and networking of all the organizations the issues of HBWs can be brought in consolidated way and there is a need to give equal rights to women in all sphere of life. She said the root causes have to be addressed first and poverty is one of them.
Organizations who participated the event are:
PILER, Entrepreneurship and Community Development Institute (ECDI) Roshni Helpline, Pervaaz Male Health Society, Pakistan Fisher Folk Forum, All Pakistan Trade Union, MCTS, SMEDA, SESSI, Hamdard University, Bridge Consultant Foundation, Pakistan Hindu Council, WDFP, LRF, DWA, PBC,
