Women work with out any legal security in KP province, Survey

Peshawar – Provincial government of Khyber Pukhtoonkhwa saying a lot about women rights in province, but in province the situation of the women more worst then any parts of the Pakistan.

Women work a news form of labour in Khyber Pukhtoonkhwa province especially in Peshawar, even they work more then labour but they didn’t have any legal security in society.

According to psycho social advocacy & rule of law (PAROL) http://parolplus.org/ survey more women were working as domestic worker in different parts of district Peshawar. According to data 89 % of these women are belonging to different rural areas of Peshawar. Eleven percent adjacent district Nowshera , Charsadda , Mardan swabi , together with conflictive districts of swat , dir lower and dir upper , malakand and from bordering federally administered tribal areas. These extreme poor and vulnerable women’s are mostly coming on daily basis to the metropolitan district of Peshawar and are earning their bread from the informal domestic labour sector.

The finding show that 80 percents of these women’s domestic workers are completely illiterate, 12.3 percent primary, 4.1 middle and 1.4 are having only metric level education. According to the assessment 77.3 % women start working as domestic workers after their marriages. In addition majority of these women includes married 62.7 % widows 15% separated 1.4 and women divorced by their husbands are forming 1.4% of the total.

The research study apart from the collection of data was able to gather a lot of general case studies as well.

According to PAROL survey the fundamental causes behind working as domestic workers are primary husband or father were drug addiction , joblessness or handicap together with no enough income to feed their families , 36.4% hence forced and compelled their women to work. In addition women are subjected to domestic violence and in laws together with family members in same instance forced to work as domestic workers. Apart from the above stated causes 14.5 women have no male bread earners and are forced to work as domestic workers to bear her and her family daily expenditures.

In a survey PAROL found that majority of the women work daily 7 to 9 hour daily with out any holiday or weekly off. Average of women domestic worker f all in lower income i.e. 43.6% earning 3000 to 4000 (35 to 45 dollars) per month with an average of 1.16 to 1.53 $ per day. The earning is mostly used for the personal, family consumption, education of children and for loan payments.

The basic protection issues cropped up during the discussion were, increased vulnerability of women due to lack of information about human right, women rights and women protection labour and contractual law in Pakistan. In addition access or lack of opportunity to the said information, membership of any particular group union etc has widened their vulnerabilities for women domestic workers. This is evident from the fact 97.7 % women are working with out any written contract with their employer and are subject to lose the job any time.

In addition to the above the lack of proper socio legal education has subjected the women domestic workers to extortion / abandoning of wages by the employers , allegation on different pretext , verbal and physical abuse , including sexual abuse with mental torture and with increased over timing with out any additional payment.

The survey shows the real face of the provincial government of Khyber Pukhtoonkhwa, how much they were interested to give empowerment to women’s.