Monthly Update January, 2007
PAKISTAN
Women's Rights: The CIDA Project on Empowering Home Based Workers completed its first quarter in January. Two provincial core group meetings (Karachi and Lahore) were held during the month. Four cooperatives of women home based workers have been established and women workers have started meeting regularly. Two provincial core group meetings (one in Karachi and one in Lahore) were the highlights of this quarter. These meetings were organized by the project partners, Women Workers Helpline- Lahore, and Labor Education Foundation Karachi.
The participants included lawyers, government officials from Law department, various women organization representatives, NGO members, labor and trade union members, councilors, journalists and home based workers etc. The problems of women home based workers were highlighted and emphasis was given to establish an alliance on provincial level for protecting the rights of these women workers. The idea of proposing a social protection policy to the government was also reinforced. The meetings ended with the formation of provincial core groups in Lahore and Karachi with members representing different groups. Four meetings with the investors have also been organized in the project areas. The objective was to briefly orient the investors about the project and make them a part of the process. The problems of Home Based Workers were discussed. The investors seemed to understand the plight of women home based workers and discussed that middlemen made profit of the deals with the contractors and exploit women HBWS to work on shamefully low prices.
As part of the planned series of awareness giving sessions with college and university students, a one and a half hours discussion session was held, at Quaid-i-Azam University. It was organized in collaboration with "Gup Shup" which is a discussion forum in physics department. The session analyzed the women protection bill from the legal and political perspectives. Students showed great interest in Action Aid publications including the MMA Offensive and documents on Hudood Ordinances.
Action Aid is a member of AASHA, the Alliance against Sexual Harassment at the Workplace. As part of the alliance, Action Aid launched one week campaign which included a one hour talk show held on the day to address sexual harassment at the workplace on the issue on FM99. The panelists were Mrs. Kishwar Naheed, a renowned poet, and Dr. Kamran Ahmed, Chairperson Mehergarh, another AASHA Member Organization. During the week long campaign FM 99 aired English and Urdu promos and public service messages on behalf of AASHA. Also, 50 Urdu and English banners were nailed out in different parts of Islamabad during the campaign. The promos and banners carried slogans such as "Let's Say No to Gender Harassment at the Workplace!", "Lets Create a Work Environment Free of Discrimination and Gender Harassment!", "Lets recognize that Every Human Being has a Right to Live with Dignity and in a Harassment and Discrimination Free Environment!", "Lets not let our Attitude towards our Colleagues be driven by Bias on the Basis of their Gender!, "Gender Harassment and Discriminatory behavior is against Fundamental Human Rights!", etc.
In collaboration with Action Aid, our long term partner organization Women Workers Helpline arranged a seminar on the issue of Sexual Harassment and Discrimination in Lahore. The seminar was addressed by Aqsa Khan, Manager Social and Women's rights unit, Bushra Khaliq, Program Manger WWHL and Labor Party representatives and was attended by more than 150 participants.
