---

Here’s more from Disposable People by Kevin Bales. This section was about Pakistan. I’m going to post it in several sections over the next few days. At the end, there will be specific things to pray for about human trafficking in Pakistan.

Slavery in Pakistan
Debt bondage and slavery are prevalent in Pakistan. One particularly vulnerable industry is brickmaking. Mud bricks are widely used in buildings, roads, and sidewalks. To produce them whole families work long days, digging dirt, hauling water, and mixing and forming bricks to be baked in hot, giant kilns. Because of their poverty these families are dependent on the kiln owners for loans to get necessities. They work constantly to pay against these debts.

It is estimated that about 200,000 families (or 750,000 people) work in this type of labor.

Life at the Kiln
Children work alongside their parents. They haul water to mix in the dirt, form a thick mud, then pass the mud along to their mother, who kneads it more and passes it to their father who slams the mud into the brick mold, then flips it out onto the ground to dry in the sun. They work from before dawn and make about 1400 bricks by 2pm when they take a break during the most oppressive heat of the day. After resting several hours, they work several more hours to prepare dirt for tomorrow’s work.

Children also help haul brick to the kiln and stack them precisely inside. The kilns are usually about the size of a football field and can be seen from quite a distance. They’re made of unfired bricks, sealed with mud. Workers must climb to the top of the kiln to shovel coal inside. Temperatures are extremely high, so workers wear thick-soled wooden sandals. Children are preferred for this work since their lighter and less likely to cause the kiln walls to collapse. If the kiln does collapse, the worker faces 1500 degree temperatures, that will leave them maimed or worse.

History
After World War II the Pakistani government had two goals: land reform and mechanization. First, mechanization meant that farmers needed fewer workers, so they evicted the laborers who’d worked on their land for centuries. Then land redistribution gave these farmers more land, making the rich richer and the poor poorer. The poor people had little choice but to sell themselves into debt bondage to the rich. Now each generation inherits the debt and work of their ancestors.

“Isolated at the kiln, they have only fading ideas of other opportunities. And for their children, there is little knowledge of any other way of life.”

---

---