Lalitpur, Jan. 5: Participants of a one-day workshop organised jointly by two human rights organisations INSEC and Anti-Slavery International (ASI) today concurred that Nepal needed a separate legislation to abolish bonded labour spread throughout Nepal in various forms. They also agreed that lack of a definition of bonded labour which is relevant to Nepal’s situation and a mechanism to authorise as well as claim compensation for bonded labourers are key reasons for the continuation of the system.
INSEC data claim that over 100,000 individuals are affected by Kamaiya system, a debt-bondage system, and some 260,000 are kept under Haliya-Haruwa system in Nepal.
Dr. Kevin Bales of ASI said economic and social globalisation has proved to be the driving force to the dramatic increase in incidents of trafficking in human for slave-like labours in Europe and Asia. “Decentralisation of economy is pushing more people into the system of bonded labour,” he said.
Dr. Bales also said that variations in bonded labour in practice in Nepal are making it more complicated to fight against it. “But all the variations have common feature of control of one person over another, denying of human rights and theft of labour power,” he added. He also emphasised that since system of bonded labour is dynamic, evolving law to abolish the system should be “flexible” and that should support rehabilitation after liberation.
Swami Agnivesh of Bonded Liberation Front in India said that Indian anti-bonded labour act is best of acts, but is weakest in the implementation aspect. “Politicians and business community with vested interest are preventing the act from being enforced, and that can also be the case in other countries as well,” he cautioned. He also claimed that fatalism and resignation to the situation advocated by religions practised in the region are making the fight against bonded labour more difficult. “People’s resignation to their fate is making them helpless from within, which is slowing down the anti-bonded labour campaign,” he said.
He also criticised the new global economic structure. “Globalisation has turned out to be a new kind of god that is transforming smaller and economically disadvantaged nations into bonded states,” he said.
Dr. Shiva Sharma of National Labour Academy said that 30 per cent of agriculture labourers in Nepal work under permanent labour relationship. He also said that excessively long working hours, low wages, engagement of more than one family member to earn a single wage, indebtedness circumventing mobility of labourers and inter-linked labour, land and credit contracts in the long term labour relationships in agriculture push the labourers into bondage situation.
The Constitution of Nepal 1990 and other human and civil rights acts prohibit slavery, serfdom or forced labour in any forms. However, advocate Pawan Ojha said that the existing laws are inadequate and inefficient to control bonded labour in Nepal. Advocating for formation of separate law to abolish bonded labour, Ojha said that the new law should provide appropriate and standard definition of bonded labour that suits local conditions, make arrangements for the waiver of unjustifiable loans taken by bonded labourers and make rehabilitation arrangements for the freed labourers.