WAction Updates
By FT Correspondent
WAction held its monthly meeting yesterday on 23 July 2017 at NOWCommunities. All gathered members were informed to identify registered female working women in formal sectors for a 1-Day Training with WAction to make them aware of legal protections available to ensure safe working conditions. The previous meetings had brought up numerous issues faced by women in their work spaces and it was decided to take initiatives on those fronts as well via social media initiatives and documentation of all such cases in Urdu and English dailies.
Most importantly, members managed to elect their convener, secretary and district coordinators for this project in Karachi for the next 6 months.
Inception of #WAction in Karachi
By FT Correspondent
NOWCommunities introduced “Women’s Action for Better Workplaces” (WABW) project on 15 June 2017 in Karachi that aims at mobilizing, organizing, capacitating, and facilitating women working in public and private sectors. It primarily advocates improved working environments through better enforcement of and reforms in the policy and legislative frameworks governing labour relations in Pakistan. The organizers are relying on cross-sector association to stir similar associations elsewhere as well.
The project basically works in Islamabad and in other four provincial capitals of Pakistan – Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar and Quetta – because they host one-seventh of Pakistan’s population and more than half of the female workforce in the formal sector.
Gathered audience of more than 50 females belonged to formal and informal sectors. The sessions before the oath-taking were engaging in a manner that made apparent for all people present the problem which was being addressed and how unitedly they have a better chance of bringing in a change that impacts not individuals but all female workforce of the country.
The project plans to ensure that it directly benefits about 50,000 women workers in public, industrial and services sectors here and so has targeted women employees and plans to have a multiplier effect on the female workforce in other areas. For example, a change in law or a better implementation mechanism, which is their aim, can potentially benefit women in the workforce across the country.
At the core of the project will be mobilization, organization and training of women working in public and private sectors to enhance their capacity to
- negotiate,
- advocate,
- lobby with employers, policy-makers, and legislators for improved and gender-sensitive workplaces.
The activities will particularly focus on implementation of laws already passed by the Parliament and Provincial Assemblies and will identify gaps and work towards required amendments to these laws.