Q: How do you think the law should protect extremely poor people who cannot pay back their loans?

Debt bondage occurs when a person is forced to work to pay off a debt. They are tricked into working for little or no pay, with no control over their debt.

Most or all of the money they earn goes to pay off their loan. The value of their work invariably becomes greater than the original sum of money borrowed. Bonded labor has existed for hundreds of years. Debt bondage was used to trap indentured laborers into working on plantations in Africa, the Caribbean, and South-East Asia, following the abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
Bonded labor is most widespread in South Asian countries such as India and Pakistan. Often entire families have to work to pay off the debt taken by one of its members. Sometimes, the debt can be passed down the generations and children can be held in debt bondage because of a loan their parents had taken decades ago.

Bonded Labor in Different Ways.
Credits: hourstv.com
Bonded labor has been outlawed in Pakistan and most other affected countries in line with the UN conventions on human rights. However, according to the 2014 Global Slavery Index, 2,058,200 people are enslaved in Pakistan. The WFF Index places Pakistan at the third position in a list of 167 countries where the problem of human slavery is most severe.
Bonded labor system is actually used to exploit the needs of poor people who have to borrow money from their landlords, in return for that they have to forgo their fundamental freedoms. Article 3 of Constitution of Islamic Republic of Pakistan requires the State to ensure that all forms of exploitation are eliminated and that it should work for the gradual fulfillment of fundamental principle; from each according to his ability and to each according to his work. By keeping a person under Bonded labor is to deprive him/her of fundamental freedoms like freedom of movement (Article 15), freedom of assembly (Article 16), freedom of association (Article 17), freedom of profession (Article 18), freedom of speech (Article 19) and the right to be equal citizen (Article 25-A).
Bonded Labor in Pakistan
Copyrights Owner: www.thenews.com.pk
Anti-Slavery International wants to end all the cases of forced labor which I have mentioned. But if we focus on exports, we risk failing to deal with the real problem, or dealing with only a small aspect of it, or indeed risking losing our influence from outside by cleaning up the export sector, while leaving all the problems of forced labor in the domestic economy untouched.
A responsible international response should be to take positive action before resorting to substantial punitive measures, for example by offering incentives in a trade to products which are certified not to involve forced labor produced in fields or sectors where forced labor is reporting to be occurring. This might involve, for example, offering reductions in customs tariffs beyond those of standard GSP. At the moment Anti-Slavery International is calling for carpets with the Rugmark label, which demonstrates that they have been made without illegal child labor, to be given exemption from tariffs. Such positive action would, once again, be a genuine demonstration that international concern about forced labor is not just a disguised opportunity for protectionism.
Ban the forced labor
Source: bandhua1947.wordpress.com
Finally if the state concerned refuses to admit that abuses are occurring or take the remedial steps suggested, punitive action is needed, ending preferential tariffs, and banning products directly made by forced labor or benefitting from it.

P.S:- SIGN THIS PETITION AND SHARE, TO PREVENT BONDED LABOR…
https://www.change.org/p/of-pakistan-government-should-stop-bonded-labor-in-pakistan

 M. SHAYAN SHAIKH


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