Concerns About Agriculture Labour in Pakistan.

Agriculture labour in Pakistan is suffering from many problems. Enforcement of minimum wage is even unknown to the agriculture workers. The inspectors of the labour departments never visited any agriculture form to inspect the status of wages at farm level. They know that the medium and big landlords and zamindars (land owners) will never cooperate with them.

No doubt agriculture is the single-largest contributor to the gross national product (GNP) and also the biggest sector for employment, agricultural workers, specifically women, are badly exploited and form an oppressed class of rural society. Even they are unaware about their rights and the labour laws of the country. Unfortunately there are no agriculture labour unions in the country. Powerful zamindars (land owners) often treat the farm labour worse than slaves and pay them their wages that are not in cash but in kind. Some time they are not paid for months and promised to pay after selling the crop and reception of money from buyer.

The farm workers are even unable to organize themselves despite being a distinct class because of absolute dependence on the landowners. The farm workers are mostly living in the mud houses built in the land of the landlords. They lack their own residence. Here issue is the absence of any land reforms whatsoever and transfer of land to ownership of the actual tilling population. Unequal access to decent work can be noted not only between women and men but also by ethnicity, age and education. 

Agricultural workers get employment for less than six months in a year and are often constrained to migrate to other avenues of employment like construction and similar blue-collar occupations during the off-season.

Nearly 79 percent rural women are directly or indirectly engaged in agriculture or agriculture labour but have a cash share of only 20.8 percent of the total income earned in Pakistan. Gender differences in employment status appear to be more pronounced in South Asia where only 13 percent of adult women are self-employed in agriculture compared to 33 percent of men, and less than six percent of rural women work in non-agricultural sectors compared to 27 percent of men. 

It would be interesting to know that, in South Asia, women appear somewhat equally distributed between wage work and self-employment (13 percent and 12 percent, respectively) within agriculture, whereas most men who work in agriculture are self-employed. 

In South Asia Women are relatively more engaged in agricultural wage employment than are women in any other region, most likely the result of women’s weaker property rights in land and other assets than in most of the other regions, coupled with increasing landlessness. South Asian women are also more likely to remain unpaid for work in their own family business than in any other region. 

Women labour workers often lack finance and circumstances force them to borrow money from time to time from private sources. Women agricultural workers often suffer severe working conditions; they work for 12 hours a day and receive no weekly rest, they are hardly provided any housing facility, their wages are invariably delayed and, in some cases, defaulted. 

The elimination of forced labour, the abolition of child labour and the elimination of all forms of discrimination in the workplace (including through ratification of a number of ILO conventions, particularly relevant to rural workers such as convention numbers 11, 111, 129, 138, 141, 182, 184 and others), rural workers, especially women and children, face both legal impediments and practical challenges in asserting their rights. Therefore, it is imperative that the four provinces of Pakistan should jointly sit together and formulate an inter-provincial migrant workmen’s act.

One thing in this case is possible that the directorate of labour may not cooperate for the enforcement of this law, yet it must be ensured that not only such legislation is promulgated but even the right of freedom of association, as envisaged in article 17 of the constitution of Pakistan, be put into effect for agricultural workers.  According to the report of the ILO Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations (CEACR), the problem of the exclusion of agricultural workers from relevant national laws and non-application of these in practice has been raised in 30 countries. 

The issues concerning violence, harassment, weak labour inspection mechanisms and non-recognition of trade unions concerning agricultural workers are quite common.
 
Gradually the provisions of various labour legislations should be extended to agricultural labour so that, after some years, all the provisions of labour legislation, including the freedom of association and the right to form trade unions can also be applicable to agricultural workers in Pakistan. 

Rural women should be provided easy incentives so that they may utilize their wages and other earned money for activities like buying small land holdings and growing vegetables or other minor crops on these lands for their income generation.

The department of agricultural extension should provide trainings to the rural women so that they may know their rightful place in the agricultural sector where they can contribute even after mechanization has been introduced. 

To recognize the role of women in agriculture, financial, political and social empowerment of the women should be encouraged giving them more wages for their labour and they should be given full control over it, this will bring a positive effect of on both the wealth and the work of the women concerned. 

The implementation of legislation can also better empower them with equal rights in the agriculture sector. Increasing the income and education level of the rural women in the long run will not only contribute to the quality of the labour force and productivity but also to food security through a lower rate of population growth.

It is need for an integrated perspective on health as most of the health problems that agricultural women face relate to their general life situation, which aggravates the problems they face as workers such as inadequate nutrition, non-accessibility to healthcare, water, housing, sanitation, maternity benefits and children amongst others.