Category Archives: Labour

No child’s play

Children and Youth, Constitution, Development and Poverty, Education, Health, Human Rights, Labour, Social Issues

By Zubeida Mustafa

FOUZIA is 13 and is employed by a working mother of two children. Fouzia is the victim of oppression on three counts. She performs the duties of an adult woman, which would be classified as child labour. She is not attending school as is compulsory for children from five to 16 years of age under Article 25-A of the Constitution.

Above all, she will soon be another example of early marriage as she is said to be engaged. The wedding will take place as soon as she has earned enough for her dowry. In the process, Fouzia has been robbed of her childhood and an education.

These deprivations do not bother this young girl’s family. Their sociocultural norms and, according to many, poverty have landed her in this ugly situation. According to Unesco, from 1987 to 2005, early marriage was the fate of nearly 32 per cent of all children in Pakistan. Continue reading No child’s play →

No trashy issue

Administration, Environment, Health, Human Rights, International Politics, Labour
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By Zubeida Mustafa

TWO seemingly insignificant events could amount to the writing on the wall for our municipal administrators all over the country. It is plain, the public will no longer turn a blind eye to poor sanitation. People are now beginning to understand the implications of environmental pollution.

Recently, the inhabitants of a village in Fatehjang tehsil (Punjab) protested against the garbage dump which the district municipality had created near their homes. Some of them actually travelled to Islamabad to meet the director of the National Commission of Human Rights to lodge their complaint. They were not happy with the odour that pervaded their homes. Even more encouraging was the fact that the inhabitants of neighbouring villages refused to allow the DMO to pile garbage near their homes when he tried to shift the dumping site. Continue reading No trashy issue →

Remembering Najma Sadeque

Development and Poverty, Economy, Guest Contributor, Human Rights, Labour, Notable Personalities, Social Issues, Women

Najma

By Deneb Sumbal Sadeque

guest-contributorDear Mum’s friends, peers and colleagues,
On this day, last year my mother, Najma Sadeque, left us so unexpectedly. Losing a parent is always hard, but losing a mother like her is impossible to describe. You feel a huge vacuum and yet feel her strong presence. Someone who didn’t just leave an example for me, but for so many others who reminiscence often. She is still missed by those who loved and revered her. Continue reading Remembering Najma Sadeque →

Trapped in poverty

Development and Poverty, Economy, Education, Health, Labour, Social Issues

By Zubeida Mustafa

MIGRANTS are in the news all over the world. Recently, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) released in Rome a report titled Sending Money Home which focused on the remittances — $436 billion in 2014 — transferred by migrant workers to their families. This received positive publicity. The countries that provided jobs to such workers were seen as helping alleviate poverty in the Third World.

In Canada, where I am on a visit, I chanced upon a local paper The Golfi Team Real Estate Market Watch which carried an article against immigrants blaming the latter for many economic woes of the country, including the escalation of property prices and suppression of wages. It sarcastically accused the political parties of seeking to capture immigrant votes by adopting pro-immigration policies while pretending to benefit the rest of the world. Continue reading Trapped in poverty →

Save Karachi

Administration, Books, Children and Youth, Development and Poverty, Economy, Education, Environment, Justice, Labour, Law & Order, Politics, Population, Social Issues

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By Zubeida Mustafa

RUMANA Husain’s recently published Street Smart: Professionals on the Street comes as a reminder of how we are losing the city where many of us have lived and worked for most of our lives. Karachi is no more what I remember of it when I was a child.

Some categories of the blue-collar workers, as Rumana calls the people who are the subject of her book, no longer exist. Mechanisation, technology and lifestyles have made them redundant. That is change, as the new replaces the old. But the tragedy is that the street professionals no longer knit the community together as they once did. Continue reading Save Karachi →