The biggest worry for Faisalabad’s female textile workers is that they have lost textile jobs forever. The situation has left behind the tension of delayed or underpaid salaries, and the harassment women face at work.
This is an excerpt from an article that has appeared in the Guardian written by Parveen Latif Ansari who heads the Women Workers’ Alliance (WWA), campaigning for better pay and conditions for thousands of women in the textile industry in Faisalabad.
Female workers have played an important role in Pakistan’s textile industry in the export of quality denim and apparel to Europe and the US. Since the pandemic 1.3 million textile jobs have been lost in Faisalabad and half of them are women. The female workers mostly from rural areas travel long distances to work for low salaries as they have no alternate income source.
Faisalabad is known as the Manchester of Pakistan and produces global quality textiles for the world. The current crisis started with a pandemic, followed by floods and then a steep rise in power has devastated the entire textile chain. It has impacted even the cottage industry where women make gloves or socks for less than one dollar per day.
Parveen Ansari in her article disclosed that women are reluctant to raise their voices fearing losing their jobs. The WWA has been protesting against mass-scale layoffs and has conducted education sessions with hundreds of women to inform them about their collective rights. She regretted that a lack of awareness about labor laws and workers’ rights still exists. According to WWA estimates, there are 150,000 workers in the hosiery sector alone out of which only 4,200 have social security cards.
She disclosed that in small mills labour laws are ignored and workers denied even maternity leave. However three months back WWA succeeded in forcing the management of Masood Textile Mills to implement the legal minimum wage. She said this milestone was achieved after a struggle of four months. a battle that took us four months.
