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More from Disposable People by Kevin Bales.

A Flawed System Become Slavery
It’s easy to see how this system can be abused by landowners to create the condition of slavery. Bales estimates that up to 30% of kiln owners cheat their workers and 10% seriously abuse them. That means about 75,000 people are held in debt slavery.

Because nearly all of the indebted workers are uneducated, it’s easy for them to fall pray to dishonest bookkeeping. This creates endlessly insurmountable debt. Landowners and foremen can also resort to violence and intimidation to keep workers from leaving. Many brick kilns have armed guards and workers are beaten publicly to frighten other workers. Women are also vulnerable to assault by landowners.

One former kiln owner describes how other owners would come along and smash a whole day’s worth of bricks—no bricks means no pay—or hold a workers leg in the oven for a second as punishment.

When a husband dies or runs away, the debt transfers to the wife and children, who aren’t able to keep up. To make sure the debt is recouped owner sometimes force men to marry widows. Widows may also be forced to prostitute themselves to make progress against debt.

If a kiln owner isn’t happy with how hard a family is working, they can sell them to someone else. Losing control of where you live and the ability to protect yourself takes away a basic human right. Dishonest kiln owners also can simply kick a family off the land when they’re done with them. Kiln owners also take family members and possessions of their workers hostage when debt gets too high or part of the family runs away.

One worker, whose brother-in-law had left the kiln in search of better work, was taken captive by the owner of the kiln where the brother-in-law had worked. “I had never been to this kiln before in my life and I had never worked there; I didn’t owe this man any money … The kiln owner just said that was tough, he was holding my brother and me as ransom against my brother-in-law’s debt. At the kiln they made me work and told me that if I tried to escape they would beat me or shoot me. At night my brother and I were locked up in a windowless room with the heat was terrible. Finally we convinced them to let us sleep outside, but they shackled us with chains to the beds where we slept.”

Hunger vs. Pride
Like batteria workers in Brazil, kiln workers in Pakistan feel tied to a sense of duty to pay their debt, even in when they’re starving or mistreated. “The poorest workers my have no possessions or prospects, but they do have their pride and their reputation—and they cling to them. It is important to remember that a good name is worth a great deal to these people.”

There is one instance where families sacrifice that sense of duty to debt: Some kiln workers who’ve left their work claiming “dishonest accounting” upon further questioning admit they left because the kiln owners and foremen had been molesting the women of the family.  Pakistani men are extremely protective of the women in their families. If one of the women is molested it brings shame to the whole family but particularly to the men who failed to protect her.

Pakistani families would much rather face hunger than shame. So they leave the kiln, but hesitate to tell anyone why they left.

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