Servants in Pakistan...

Arts & Culture Culture, Arts, Literature & Linguistics
21

Dear Nadia
First of all on “being Judgmental “ issue:
Every one has an individual nick appended to their post so that there “posts” can be judged individually according to their attitude. It is basic human instinct to be judgemental. I am not judging u on your morality, religion, sanity..Rather individually from post to post …so I would suffice to say I am judging posts, which belong to a person called Nadia_h.
I will give u a small e.g.:
A British writer goes to India spends all his life there and writes a book when critics read his book, they say his writing has influences from the Indian culture, Are the critics being judgmental…should the writer say .I SHALL ONLY BE JUDGED BY GOD OR MY PARENTS ……I don’t think so.

PS : u have another thread in this forum called Omar Khayam I have posted there read my reply and u will understand what I mean.

Now the other issue of “Fooling and being Gullible”

Well dear sis! Its not only Nadia_h, outlaw and a few other guppies that pass through this very important forum of Society and Culture, rather there are people from many other nationalities who drift through this forum to learn about our culture. If a mod puts a thread that falsely portrays a part of our society. Then some one should put a counter argument before the foreigners become judgemental and perceive our society in a sceptical demeanour.

Certain people will sugar coat their counter argument that much that the gist of the matter will be lost. Well I am not one of them.

After all this if u still think I was quite rude.I will try to brush up my manners next time.
Take care and Allah hafiz
PKC

22

PKC: Stay out of this thread if you have nothing to contribute. If you are concerned about the moderators' qualifications, kindly, forward your complaints to the admin.

I warn you again, DO NOT sidetrack this thread from its original topic and refrain from personal attacks, and if you persist, I will ask for your posting privileges to be suspended immediately.

23

Outlaw, lighten up man, you are not the God. This is a discussion board and not a correctional facility, let it be as it is supposed to be.

Now to the issue at hand. I think Nadia generalised things and since she was basically accusing the whole population, people may take offence.

There are two different kind of workers in Pakistani households. One who have been there for a long time and due to their nature and the nature of the people thay work for they have become a part of the family. Then there is a group that is doing it only for the money, and sign a proper contract with terms and conditions and will leave at the end of the contract if they find a better opportunity. The later type is no different than me or any body else working for an employer.

The house I grew up in had a lot of helpers (that is what we were taught to consider them and not servants). I never found a difference between bibi and my mother, infact bibi knew more about what I did than my mother. Bibi helped my mother raise all four of her childern and lived with us all her life. She was my mother's confidant and was always involved in all family decisions. Bibi passed away two years ago, but when she was alive I still used to go to her room at night and sleep in her bed, just as I did with my mother, when I went back home.

Dulha Jan chacha was and still is with us for helping my mother in the kitchen and out of the house chores. He was the one who when my mother was married helped her with the budgeting and still has full authority as to what to buy at our house. Hayat Khan has been with us for God knows how long. Last time I went home, Hayat's son was at the house while Hayat was in Afghanistan.

These are all members of the family. Then we also had a few others whose name I cant even remember, they came to our house, learned a few tricks of the trade and left for better brighter pastures. They were never involved in any family conferences or decisions and were treated as contract workers. I think we have had 5 or 6 people over the course of years who came from the provinces and learned driving at our house and are working in other places now. Some were helped by my father to find a driver's job at government offices with lots of perks. However if some one like you came and treated the later gruop of people differently than us, I am sure we would have been offended. With this kind of being-extra nice attitude you would spoil the dicipline and for the week that you stayed with us you would have made us look as if we were bad or cruel to these people which we were not. Same as your cousins objecting to how you were treating the people at their place.

When I moved into a management position, I initially maintained the informal relation ship with the operations people, which later on created problems for me as it was difficult for me to take a few decisions. I had to intentionally distance myself from the personal relationships I had with the ops people to maintain the dicipline of the organisation. I am still accused as the champion of the underdogs in meetings but the people working for me know how to keep their distance. These are just facts of life.

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Oh one other thing Nadia, nobody ever stopped me from doing my own chores. Infact at times I was forced to do them. I find it strange that you felt uncomfortable by some one taking care of you but did nothing about it except feeling uncomfortable.

25

[QUOTE]
Originally posted by The Grateful Dead: *
**Outlaw, lighten up man, you are not the God. This is a discussion board and not a correctional facility, let it be as it is supposed to be.*

[/QUOTE]

Very well said.......

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Gentlemen: I don't need to justify any action/statement deemed necessary to implement the rules of this bulletin board. Every moderator has his own style, and if you disagree with mine; too bad. Now, I say it once for all; refrain from getting down low personal and let the members discuss this topic at hands.

27

Whatever yaar. I have said my piece and it was just an advice. Do not think that this moderator job was given to you because of any qualities that you had. You only have it because your posts were not controversial and mostly boring.

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[QUOTE]
Originally posted by Poodenay_Ki_Chutney: *
**Nadia this is tottally bizzare and ludicurious*

no one in pakistan is ill treating his servants ....actually u have stayed away in a foriegin culture for way too long and dont know what is urs and what is not . (stepping in 2 boats at the same time).
every one in pakistan calls his/her servant with that much respect that u all wannabe/bornabee dont even call ur parents with that amount of respect.(used as a metaphor)
we always called our servant chacha(uncle) or bajji( sister) ....can u believe the ironic situiation , one day I was talkin to my khansama (servant is a colonial term I wont use it) cook, and he said , just imajine if we were all rich how would the world go around , he was very happy to work for us ,as his children were educated fed and clothed by our family and I think who would do that in ur self centered western society.
Now a days if u treat a employee badly u will get it on ur face ...they wont stand for it , I think it when u left pakistan (partition time) u envisiged our society differently well sis!!! things have changed......
secondly if u r workin in the west in any job u r also a servant ...huh ...if u think u have rites sweety pie u r tottally wrong ...the amount of advantages(insaanyat,free education to chilldren, free meals and accomadation) that we give to our employees .....u cant imagine that by the west(34% tax, rent to be paied ur self , food to buy ur self) in 2000 years.....huh so go and fool someone else.

PKC.
[/QUOTE]

you are generalizing an entire group of people. while not everyone treats their servants badly, there are cases, whether its in cities or worse when itsin villages where you have the serf system still in existence. stuff that your favourite writers i,e, ashfaq ahmad and bano qudsia have both touched upon in their daramas..maybe they were trying to fool people too :)

The fact that your family or families you kno treat their servants well does not mean that there are no cases where the people dont treat them with respect.

So the truth is somewhere in the middle, there are families who treat servants well, take care of them as told to us in religion i.e. feed them what you eat, clothe them as you would clothe yourself.

I dont see it as anyone fooling anyone here, Nadia is presenting some of her observations, and to present a balanced point of view you can present yours.

baat tameez say bhi ki jaa sakti hai :)

29

here is an interesting read.

** G I R L S E R V A N T S

Domestic service is a unique aspect of child labour issue. It is unique in the sense that unlike other forms of child labour, practically the entire society is involved in domestic child labour. The child often works continuously, the duties may stretch over the entire day except for a few sleeping hours, in return for which the employer offers food, shelter and old clothes. While working for a household the child may be safer in terms of load and nature of work but this form of child labour is particularly vulnerable to child abuse, ranging from verbal to sexual abuse. According to the SPARC State of Pakistan’s Children 1998-89, their tasks included cleaning the houses (89%), washing dishes (64%) and clothes (42%). A small percentage was found to be taking care of babies and cooking. Almost 90% of girl servants were punished if they did not work efficiently or spoilt something. 53% were threatened with dire consequences, while many were verbally abused. Between 10 to 15 percent were beaten or hurt by their employers. Besides physical and mental abuse, many of them were not even given food at their place of work. 39% were never provided any relief by the employers in case of serious injury or sickness. **

This is from a Pakistani organization.

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and another one

*(ii) Domestic Service

Domestic service is another area, neglected by regulatory legislation. In this area reliable statistics are not available as to the total number of work force and the percentage of children among them. Again, no comprehensive survey/study was ever carried out to gauge the problems/issues confronted by the domestic servants. Certain NGOs and individuals have carried out some research projects on the subject but the magnitude of the issues taken up and the universe of such projects were limited/restricted. In the absence of such vital statistics it is hard to visualise the peculiar problems confronted by domestic servants and suggest a proper framework for their welfare. What is obvious though is the dismal plight of domestic servants. Nearly every lower middle class family hires the services of at least one helping hand (full time or part time) to assist it in the domestic chores, such as cleaning, cooking, washing, baby sitting etc. Keeping a servant is a status symbol; and therefore, the higher the economic status of the family, the larger the number of servants it will engage. Quite a large percentage of these servants consist of children. Children, indeed, due to their manifest vulnerability to exploitation (working for longer duration on small wages, etc) are a preferred commodity in such service contracts. **Neglected by the State and society and devoid of any legal protection, they are susceptible to abuse and exploitation. They are further deprived of their right to education. **Such state of affairs is violative of the safeguards available under the Constitution and international convention, and cannot be countenanced in a civilised society. The Government must, therefore, take appropriate steps to remedy the situation. Such steps must be multi-dimensional; an important component of which should be redressing and resolving the underlying causes of the problem. It must take measures for poverty alleviation, enhancing opportunities for employment, provision of educational facilities and bringing greater awareness about the negative aspects of such labour. *

http://www.paklawcom.gov.pk/reports/report28.htm

oh and this is by teh govt of Pakistan

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[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by The Grateful Dead: *
Whatever yaar. I have said my piece and it was just an advice. Do not think that this moderator job was given to you because of any qualities that you had. You only have it because your posts were not controversial and mostly boring.
[/QUOTE]

Nah he was given the job because Admin of this site thought he had the right qualities and they are the people who's decision counts. Pulling people up for making stupid comments like "go fool someone else" is part of the job.

Fraudia,

That's what I meant by this system being open to abuse. Although many servants will get fine treatment in many cases, without legislation to protect their rights there's bound to be cases of exploitation. Dealing with it is not as easy as identifying the problems though.

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fraudiay

If u would have read my subsequent posts u would known why......but u just picked the first one in the thread.

u have also mentioned bano qudsia and ashfaq ahmed in this thread ....humm...interesting .... The way Ashfaq/Bano depict life,.... it connotes a certain elevation over social vices...It is to give u the "Broder Picture" on life in an impolite way.

secondly Nadia generalised, over the insignificant experiences she had in Pakistan so a generic answer was needed.Yes! the answer seemed a littel ill-mannered i.e I was trying to be candid and straight forward at the same time.

Thirdly the reads u have put in .....are not very appropriate as these issues are subsets of the actual thread in hand ....If nadia had started this thread on Child labour/ill treated girl servants then ur post would have been quite apt.....and I would have contributed something more significant.

MR XTREME>>>>>Nah he was given the job because Admin of this site thought he had the right qualities and they are the people who's decision counts<<<<<<<<<<

"birds of feather flock together"
PKC

33

Aside from Muzarra system that only applies to agricultural sector, many people who keep servants do so to make themselves feel important. Laziness adds a little more coating to their self-importance. I have seen families with 150 people living in the same household, would still have 5 or 10 servants. Are those 150 people all so imbecile?

I guess it will take time for this menace of society to get under control. Servants should be treated as employees and not as a welfare arrangement. It should be a legitimate business practice and not a form of servitude and subjugation.

34

Podeenay

I have intentionally limited my sources to talk about domestic servants. as Xtreme pointed out, there are no real laws to regulate and govern these standards. You are talking about things from your perspective, but not everyone treats their servants as they ahve been treated in your family.

That is exactly the reason that i said the truth is somewhere between Nadia's generalizations and your generalizations.

If we start looking at the larger issue of employee abuse in Pakistan and not just domestic servants, there are volumes of reports on the issue of child labour, bonded labour, etc etc.

btw candid and straight forward is not the same as ill mannered :)

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[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Fraudz: *
Podeenay

That is exactly the reason that i said the truth is somewhere between Nadia's generalizations and your generalizations.

:)
[/QUOTE]

I agree with the above statement 100% .......but the conversation had to be pulled from pole to pole to get a person like u to mediate between us.

btw candid and straight forward is not the same as ill mannered <<<<<<<<<<<<

but in some societies ill manered is quite the same as being straight forward and candid. ;)

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[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Poodenay_Ki_Chutney: *

but in some societies ill manered is quite the same as being straight forward and candid. ;)
[/QUOTE]

we are not talking about lalu khet here. :D

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[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Poodenay_Ki_Chutney: *

but the conversation had to be pulled from pole to pole to get a person like u to mediate between us.

[/QUOTE]

No it didn't.

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[QUOTE]
Originally posted by Fraudz: *
**Neglected by the State and society and devoid of any legal protection, they are susceptible to abuse and exploitation. They are further deprived of their right to education. *
oh and this is by teh govt of Pakistan
[/QUOTE]

The dumbest thing ive heard from paks gov. Dont they realize that the these servants get paid! Thats better than them sitting on the side of the road scamming people.
The money the servants get is for them to spend. They can spend it on education, food, or clothes. Its their choice.
If mushy and his little elves really wanted to help why not divert all the money from his "military" into "education" which country in the world says people are being deprived of education, but then gos and buys 100 new tanks. Only in pakistan my fellow guppies. Only in pakistan.

The people who hire these servants are doing them a favor. These people learn tasks and get some money. Many people who have servants give their children education (my fam does). Paks gov isnt givin them money for education...but we (the employers of the servant) are.

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*Originally posted by hskhan: *

** The dumbest thing ive heard from paks gov. Dont they realize that the these servants get paid! Thats better than them sitting on the side of the road scamming people. **

I dont think the issue is thatthe servents get paid. they are making a point that there need to be regulations regarding domestic servants to prevent the type of abuse that does take place.

as far as a kid getting abused, abuse is abuse, whether he is being abused by some beggers ring to make money for them, is a bonded labourer in some sweatshop, or being slapped around or worked to death in some upstarts house.

*The money the servants get is for them to spend. They can spend it on education, food, or clothes. Its their choice. *

The other studies indicate thatsometime these servants are working 15-16 hours each day. education is a little bit of an issue there.

*If mushy and his little elves really wanted to help why not divert all the money from his "military" into "education" *

Becauseground realties are different and defence is something thatis needed as well. However even if they divert all the money to education. How would a servant kid who works 16 hours a day take advantage of the education? this is as much of a social issue as it is an economic issue.

**
which country in the world says people are being deprived of education, but then gos and buys 100 new tanks. Only in pakistan my fellow guppies. Only in pakistan. **

actually there are a number of other countries that are in the same situation. All you need to do is go and read about the condition of these people. And right now we are only talking about domestic servants, and not sweatshops and bonded labour, when we start talking about it the level of potential and actual abuse increases and the list of countries which have these issues greatly increases as well.

*The people who hire these servants are doing them a favor. These people learn tasks and get some money. *

learn tasks? okay..

*Many people who have servants give their children education (my fam does). Paks gov isnt givin them money for education...but we (the employers of the servant) are. *

so many families do, and many families do not. This does not change the fact that the potential for abuse exists because there are no regulations governing the issue of domestic servants.

It would be much better if there were regulations ranging from minimum wages, to hours of work, types of duties that are part of the servants work and those that are not.

Since all ppl with servants are so benevolent, I am sure they wont mind.

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I know this veers off the topic a little, but I have lately been feeling very uncomfortable about the fact that sometimes I treat my own family members as servants. How awful is that. I have my mom and dad do a lot of things for me and do not offer assistance on many occassions. Both a lot older than me, both being mistreated by me. Therefore I am going to start within my own family, and try to stop taking advantage of my own parents by treating them like they have to serve me and start contributing more in my own household.

When I went to Pakistan, what I did not like seeing on one occassion is one of the servants at my dads friends house was made to stay on the outside porch most of the day and nobody talked to her. I tried talking to her but she didnt understand a word I said. sigh