Karachi(Cliff News)The women workers Alliance is a representative body of women workers from the formal and informal sector including women workers from garment and textile sector Lahore and Karachi, shared Ume Laila today in the second meeting of the women workers Alliance.Alliance shall be representing their respective groups to take up larger cause of women workers rights and demands to be taken forward for advocacy with relevant stakeholders.Under the Sindh HBWs Act 2018 and National Action of Business and Human Rights. The demands shall later be encapsulated at provincial level by ensuring engagement from workers unions for consolidation of the charter of demands at Provincial level. Ume Laila added that the alliance aims to feed in the information required for provincial advocacy further leading to implementation of Sindh HBWs Act 2018 across province, hereby ensuring the grievances and issues of women workers by proper legislation and implementation of women friendly labor laws.Maheen Arif shared that the Alliance will have a constant link with the line department, Labour unions and other stakeholders to be benefited with the services provided by these departments and organizations. Further efforts will be made to explore possibilities to include Women Workers’ issues from informal and formal sector in the upcoming government schemes and development programs for ensuring the inclusion of Women workers, specifically HBWs and their protection.Shakeela Asghari, added her insights about raising the charter of demand in front of government and add the mazdor card system in it. She agreed the importance of having an alliance between different union representatives and CSOs representatives. Ms. Shabeeha shah also shared the importance of having the women of working alliance group and share her experience that how group can all work together to form a stronger alliance
Women Workers Alliance demanded that GoS policies recognize the importance of women workers in the economy and the challenges with respect to working women in formal and informal sectors.The recent policies based on the gendered frameworks are also suggest coverage of these sectors under labour laws and but do not provide any framework or recommendation for ratification of relevant ILO Conventions C-177 and 190.Pakistan has repeatedly ranked as the second worst country for gender inequality in the world. In Pakistan women and girls face lack of opportunities, discrimination and violence. Therefore in light of the prevailing situation, it is highly recommended that GoP should ratify ILO C 190 ensure its inclusion in a 9th Core Labour Standard and align all the existing provincial core labour frameworks in accordance with ILO C 190 and R 206.
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Convention ILO 190 shall be applied by means of national laws and regulations, as well as through collective agreements or other measures consistent with national practice, by extending or adapting existing occupational safety and health measures to cover violence and harassment and developing specific measures where necessary.Therefore, in the existing scenario, it’s important that Government of Pakistan
In line with the ILO core labour standards, the GoP should give special attention to the problems women in the informal and formal sector contributing in the garment and textile supply chains with distinct social needs. They are indulge in vulnerable and precarious work. It should further need to plan accordingly as follow:
• GoP should take appropriate measure to ensure mechanisms for the ensuring universal mechanism for the registration of Home based workers across provinces.
• GoP need to strengthen social and labour protection frameworks by combatting existing inequalities based on a number of grounds including sex, gender, age, race and other factors that increase the vulnerability of certain populations to slavery and exploitation.
• GoP need to mobilize and encourage national, provincial and regional efforts aimed at resolving their problems, and promote effective policies aimed at decent job creation, safer working environment ensuring a substantive increase in the female labour force participation.
• At a time of heightened risk for women and children, greater investment of resources for women and child protection are urgently needed to be invested.
• In order to address the global challenge together due to post pandemic economic situation, it’s pertinent to allocate budget for development and to accelerate action in implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), GSP Plus status towards a sustainable and resilient recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic shocks. And ensuring the protection of workers across sectors.
• The GoP and other entities like CSOs, women, labour rights organizations and worker’s unions need to address the structural causes that contribute to forced labour and worker’s exploitation with conatus support to those offering comprehensive assistance to victims.
• In order to increase the female labour force participation and protect the major unrecognized workforce of Government of Pakistan should take appropriate measure , laws, policies, implementation mechanisms for informal workers to recognize their work, count it and set adequate wages and rates for different categories of workers and work.
• The GoP in collaboration with important stakeholders/CSO should prepare policy briefs based on research empirical evidence to further support the argument of inclusion of the informal women working in the home base industry, domestic workers, agriculture workers as an important stakeholder where labour protection is un accessible.
• It’s also important to garner tripartite support within the workers and employers members to recognize the lowest tier of the garment and textile supply chains. Many voices raised in the support of the women would enable the GoP to consider their inclusion upcoming legislations in light of the ILO 177 & 190.
• In lieu of the above debate it is important to further deliberate for the formulation country wide legislative framework in order to address discrimination against all forms of employment of informal workers especially women.
