I beg to move,

That this House
has considered modern day slavery in Pakistan.

I thank you, Sir Roger, for coming to stand in as Chair. We appreciate that very much. I also thank right hon. and hon. Members for coming along to participate in the debate, and I thank in particular those in the Public Gallery who have deep interest in this subject matter for attending and for all the hard work they do.

This debate is an opportunity to highlight the issue of slavery in Pakistan, particularly in relation to brick kilns. I declare an interest as chair of the all-party parliamentary group for Pakistani minorities, and I must speak in particular of Morris Johns, the administrator of the APPG, who is in the Public Gallery. It is through his hard work and the hard work of everyone on the APPG that we are able to highlight the issue in this House and to work freely to ensure that people in Pakistan can gain freedom.

I am grateful to have the opportunity to address the deeply tragic and profoundly urgent issue of the continued existence of modern slavery in various industries of Pakistan. I am going to focus on one of the most entrenched and brutal forms of modern slavery, which occurs in the brick kiln industry. It is a stain on Pakistan’s conscience, a violation of human rights and a barrier to social and economic progress. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for agreeing to this debate and granting time in Westminster Hall to discuss this vital issue.

I commend the excellent report on modern-day slavery and brick kilns that was published in May 2024 by the APPG for Pakistani minorities. It shed a vital light on the daily suffering endured by so many, particularly those from minority faith communities. Pakistan is the third largest brick producer in south Asia. Estimates suggest that more than 1 million men, women and children work in approximately 10,000 brick kilns in the Punjab region alone, yet despite religious minorities making up around only 5% of the population, the percentage of religious minorities in brick kilns is often as high as 50%, particularly in Punjab and Sindh provinces. Across the brick kilns, marginalised and excluded groups, such as the scheduled caste Hindus, Christians and Muslim Shaikhs, are working in horrific conditions, in bonded labour and without sufficient wages to afford necessities.

I have been to Pakistan twice in my time in Parliament. The last time was to visit some religious minorities, in particular the Ahmadiyya Muslims, and the time before that was with Morris Johns, when I had the chance to see more of what was happening in Pakistan. I would love to be able to report back that things are better, but things are not, and today is an opportunity to highlight one of the things that definitely needs to be addressed.

The history of brick kiln slavery in Pakistan is long and persistent. It is rooted in centuries-old systems of debt bondage and social and religious hierarchy. Landless labourers, often from marginalised communities, have been forced to work in kilns under the peshgi system, where they receive an advance loan from the kiln owners. The debt is then often inflated and manipulated and keeps them trapped for years, sometimes decades, along with their children and families. Employers often take advantage of the workers’ low status in society.

As a result, entire family units are forced to work, with women bringing their new-born children to the brick kilns as well—it starts from the earliest of ages. According to a survey from the Islamabad-based Trust for Democratic Education and Accountability, 72% of brick kiln workers have children working with them in the kilns. It is a stain on our global conscience that the next generation are destined to face the same oppression as their parents. What happens to the parents and grandparents will happen to the children unless the necessary change comes. Despite the passage of the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act 1992, and despite Pakistan’s ratification of international treaties that prohibit forced labour and child labour, the practice persists—indeed, it seems to thrive.

Weak enforcement, a lack of worker registration and the economic leverage of kiln owners have allowed bonded labour to continue unchecked, particularly in Punjab, but also in the Sindh province. The brick kilns are often in remote or suburban areas, so the communities working at the sites frequently face major issues in accessing quality healthcare, water, sanitation and education. One eyewitness account describes the harshness of the workers’ conditions:

“They are barefoot, have no gloves, and work like this from dawn to dusk all day every day”,

seven days a week.

The health hazards of working in such conditions have been widely documented. Hazardous fumes emerge from the black smoke, resulting in higher rates of asthma and other health issues and increasing the risk of contracting tuberculosis. The contaminated water that is used to mix the soil, without any protective equipment, also gives workers at the kilns various skin diseases. When we work in this country, all the health and safety conditions are in place; in Pakistan, there are none of any description.

It is vital also to highlight the horrific nature of child labour and exploitation in the brick kilns. As children grow, they are forced to work gruelling 14-hour days and exposed to toxic fumes. Children as young as four or five years old have been documented in the kilns. They suffer from respiratory problems and severe malnutrition, and there are reports that they also suffer from poor eyesight as a result of their working conditions. Their mortality rate is higher than among children elsewhere. Children are often kept as hostages by the kiln owners to prevent their parents from leaving under the pretext of seeking medical care of shopping for essentials. Children witness their parents being subjected to violence and physical and emotional threats, greatly impacting their ability to develop into normal adults.

Child labour has persisted in Pakistan despite legislative reforms, which unfortunately have not translated into any kind of significant change. Only 12% of the children attend school regularly, so they do not have educational opportunities, and 62% have never been enrolled in a formal or informal education programme. If somebody works here, there is an obligation that their children are in education—in the brick kilns of Pakistan, no. It is utterly unacceptable that this type of treatment has been allowed to persist and to grow. We must protect the dignity and wellbeing of these children.

The conditions at the brick kilns disproportionately affect women and girls. They are excluded from financial decision making and are unable to influence the negotiation of loans, yet they have to bear the consequences through the resulting bondage. Women are also increasingly susceptible to exploitation and abuse by their husbands or fathers. Devastatingly, in a 2019 study carried out on brick kilns, approximately 20% of the females admitted that they were sufferers of mental torture at home. A woman in this situation is stuck in a cycle of abuse; she has no option to escape or get away or to change her life. Women and girls have also faced extensive sexual violence and abuse in the brick kilns. According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, about 35% of women workers at brick kilns are abused and harassed by their bosses. Many women in Pakistan’s brick kilns are subjected to severe restrictions, with some forcibly confined to their homes by the kiln owners.

Two women brick kiln workers interviewed by Human Rights Watch’s Asia Division had been forced—these things are quite upsetting—to have regular sexual relations with their employer or members of their family as a condition of their stay in the brick kilns. Some women were even raped and abused by jamadars or local police officers, so it goes beyond the brick kilns to those who are supposed to enforce the law but actually abuse their position within it. Christian and Dalit women are particularly vulnerable—marginalised for being women and for belonging to a minority religious group or caste. Owing to a lack of accountability and active investigations, kiln owners act with impunity. Workers who are medically unfit are also physically beaten and verbally abused.

No person, regardless of faith or background, should be subjected to such grievous violations of their personal life in any way. As chair of the APPG for international freedom of religion or belief, I believe very much that people should be able to worship their God as they wish. Along with that come human rights, but those are often taken away from these workers.

Devastatingly, there have also been reports of—these are quite upsetting circumstances—organ harvesting at brick kilns, where the forced removal of organs is carried out to repay debts that are owed by family units. That is a horrific example of how deep chains of debt trap generations. It is almost unthinkable that, in today’s world, men, women and even small children are treated in such an inhumane way—their very bodies seen as collateral for a debt that should never have existed in the first place. It is as if the brick kiln owners can use them in whatever way they wish.

The illiteracy rates have a powerful impact on how individuals and families remain in debt. A study on one brick kiln demonstrated that 80% of the workers were illiterate, which means that they were easily exploited and taken advantage of. As a result, kiln workers were unable to understand the terms of loans and interest rates and were rendered extremely vulnerable to exploitation by owners because, when the owner sets a paper down in front of them or gives them instructions on what is happening, they accept that as gospel, whatever the facts are. That is just another way of exploiting them. The lack of education is not just a social disadvantage; it is a deliberate tool of control. When people cannot read the contracts that they are bound to or calculate the interest that is consuming all their wages, they become trapped in a cycle of servitude that can last all their lifetime and, indeed, generations.

As chair of the all-party parliamentary group, I have seen at first hand how poverty, discrimination and lack of education combine to trap individuals in conditions that amount to modern slavery—the very thing that we are all concerned about.