Pakistan's Kiln Workers Bricked In by Debt

Families on Ancient Assembly Lines 'Can Never Earn Enough to Leave'

TARLAHI, Pakistan -- At the end of a village road, behind a grassy bluff, lies a hidden valley carpeted with thick red dust and canyoned with craggy mounds of earth. At the bottom, clay-colored figures squat barefoot all day, shaping balls of mud into bricks. In the distance, a dozen scattered chimneys spew clouds of black smoke, which trail off prettily across the horizon.

This is the world of Pakistan's brick kilns, a self-contained and primitive production system that has changed little in generations. It relies on the labor of migrant families, from girls of 6 to grizzled grandfathers, who live in brick huts beside the kilns, rarely leave the quarries and never fully wash off the red mineral stains that seep into their feet, hands and clothing.

"My father did this work before me, and my children will do this work after me," said Abdul Wakil, 25, who makes bricks in a kiln about 20 miles from Islamabad, the capital. Sitting on his haunches last week, he slapped mud balls into metal molds and moved like a crab along the lengthening row of damp bricks. The workday had started at 4:30 a.m. By sundown, Wakil said, he would finish 1,200 bricks and earn $3.50.

His two younger sons toddled along beside him, playing in the mud. The 7-year-old was already at work, deftly molding balls. A gaunt old man watched from a cart, coughing frequently. His fingers were stained mauve. He was not certain of his age but said he had been working in the kilns "since the time of Ayub Khan," a military ruler of the 1950s.

"This work shortens your life. No one would do it by choice," said the man, Abdul Sadiq. "The problem is that you can never earn enough to leave. If your wife needs an operation or the rainy seasons lasts too long, you have to borrow from the kiln owners. You try to repay it, but the debt stays with you, sometimes for your whole life. It's like a pair of invisible handcuffs."

Brickmakers toil near the bottom of Pakistan's economic and social ladder, forever at the mercy of heat, dirt, human greed and official indifference. By law, they cannot be compelled to work or be kept in bondage; in practice, the great majority are bound to the kilns by debt. The work is seasonal and families move often, but if they leave one kiln for another, their debt is transferred to the new owner. If they try to escape, they said, they are hunted down.

At least 200,000 Pakistanis, many of them children, work in more than 2,500 kilns across the country, according to studies by labor advocacy organizations. Their plight is well known and often described as a national disgrace. Human rights groups have exposed cases of kiln owners chaining or imprisoning workers; reformists have initiated programs to forgive their debts and educate their children.

But resistance to change has been stubborn. Kiln owners tend to be economically powerful and politically well-connected, while many brick workers are illiterate, nomadic, cut off from modern society and unaware of their rights. For all its discomforts and indignities, moreover, this is the only life they know, and some say they cannot imagine where else they would go.

"Brick workers fall outside the formal labor force and fall between the cracks of the law," said Tahira Abdullah, an activist with the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan in Islamabad. "They have no unions, no organization, no voice and no one to speak for them." With permanent debts tying most of them to the kilns, she added, "they are almost like serfs."

Although federal laws against child labor and debt peonage are rarely enforced, the Pakistani court system has recently become more aggressive in pursuing cases of worker imprisonment. Protests by brick workers against inhumane conditions, some organized by a national group called the Bonded Labor Liberation Front, are becoming more common.

Such encouraging news rarely penetrates the insular world of the kilns, however, while cautionary tales circulate swiftly. In conversations at several kilns in this Punjab province district last week, a few older workers said that they had heard about efforts to promote debt forgiveness or wage increases over the years, but that no one had ever actually come to help them.

Salim Mohammed, 28, said that five years ago he asked for a raise of 20 rupees (about 30 cents) a day. The owner refused and had him arrested on false charges. The police beat him severely, he said, and after one month the owner finally had him released. The case is still languishing in a provincial court. Mohammed still works in the kilns, and his two sons work alongside him.