Adil Najam
Tou qadir-e-mutlaq hai, magar tairay jahaN meiN
HaiN talkh bohat banda-e-mazdoor kay auqaat – Iqbal
Dear Readers,
While All Things Pakistan has remained alive and online, it has been dormant since June 11, 2011 - when, on the blog's 5th anniversary, we decided that it was time to move on. We have been heartened by your messages and the fact that a steady traffic has continued to enjoy the archived content on ATP. While the blog itself will remain dormant, we are now beginning to add occasional (but infrequent) new material by the original authors of the blog, mostly to archive what they may now publish elsewhere. We will also be updating older posts to make sure that new readers who stumble onto this site still find it useful.
We hope you will continue to find ATP a useful venue to reflect upon and express your Pakistaniat. - Editors
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if you are not a yes man to president mushraf’s Government. you should read it twice no matter
how big and respected office you are holding.
Very nice picture and thoughtful headline.
Yes, we need to think about the poor and the workers not just once a year but every day.
Went through all the other old writeups you have links to, this is an impressive set of essays . You shoudl find a way of collecting them somehow.
Keep up the good work.
P.S. Could you please post english translation of the two lines at the top?
It is amazing how the people who seem to care so deeply for Pakistan when you talk about politics or about religion, go quiet when you talk about the poor! I guess that is why we are where we are as a nation…
I just wish everyone looks at this picture and takes a pause to think about what they can do. Because on this one we can do something. Earlier tonight I was moved by this and did do something very little but talking about ones own act is not good. But I want to thank you for making me think about this.
Workers’ woes
(Dawn magazine, April 29, 2007)
By Dr Faisal Bari and Samreen Malik
In Pakistan an unskilled worker working on a daily wage basis earns Rs3,750 per month (Rs150 daily), even if s/he has to work for 25 days a month. If
a woman heads an average Pakistani household having seven members and 1.3 earning members, her total income will be Rs4,875. Even if she gets the minimum
wage set by the government, she will earn only Rs4,000 per month. Is this enough for a seven-member family to earn a decent living? Clearly not. At Rs700
per person per month, individuals in the household clearly live below the (stringently drawn food-based) poverty line. It means that such a family head
does not even have enough to properly feed all family members. How can s/he provide clothing, shelter and many other household needs?
But the story does not end here. The real tragedy stems from the fact that if the family of an unskilled worker does not have any savings and does not
have the access to credit facility, which is usually the case with poor families, it finds itself in a vicious poverty trap, from which it cannot even have any hope of escaping. The lack of proper food and the inability to buy medical care stop workers from working more. It also limits the energy of the children in the family. And with no money to acquire education and/or vocational training, the family becomes despondent. The worker is poor and his/her
children will be poor too. The family has no savings with which it can invest for a better future, and since higher incomes come with assets, human or physical, it cannot be optimistic about getting higher income in the future. In addition to that, the slightest of a shock, in terms of income loss because
of losing a job, poor health etc, could make things worse. There are many people who have been forced into selling their children or their kidneys, or even into committing suicide because of their inadequate income.
Tragic tales continue. The family of a worker, who works and is willing to work more than eight hours a day performing a back-breaking job, is not compensated
with enough to be able to raise his/her family with dignity.
For full article, click
http://www.dawn.com/weekly/dmag/archive/070429/dma g1.htm
or for the next 5 days, the following:
http://www.dawn.com/weekly/dmag/dmag1.htm
TODAY IS MAY DAY, INTERNATIONAL LABOUR DAY, ALL OVER THE WORLD THERE WILL BE PROTESTS AGAINST TYRANNY,FASCISM, CAPITALISM & IMPERIALISM
READ MY LATEST COLUMN “CLASH OF GLOBALISATIONS” WILL BE UPDATED AFTER TOMORROW’s RALLIES
http://dilnawazinqalabi.blogspot.com
http://bradistancalling.blogspot.com