Home based workers, majority of them workers participating in the Four day global meet of Home-based workers have urged their respective governments to recognize them as workers and to formulate and implement labour laws and social initiatives to protect their rights .
“More than 110 home based workers from 24 countries taking part in the global meet in a global declaration announced today have demanded extending and enforcing labor laws for the self employed home based workers world over including India.The other demands in include providing full infrastructure for them including transport , fair prices in the markets, transparent contracts, protection from arbitrary cancellation of contract orders and improving their skill and technology”said said Mrs Feroz Mehrotra, Director ,Homenet South Asia, major organizer of the global event.
“The other demands in the global declaration include improving access to basic infrastructure services to upgrade home as work place, providing accessible and affordable transport service, and providing good quality, low cost housing schemes for home based workers “said Mrs Mehrotra .
“Home-based workers constitute an invisible workforce that numbers in the millions globally, but which has very little protection, representation or access to social security available to other workers in the economy. There are estimated to be about 100 million home-based workers around the world, with about 50 million of these living in South Asia,’’ said Ms. Roberta Clarke, Regional Director, UN Women, Asia Pacific.
“The underlying theme of the meet was to project the importance of moving out of poverty though homebased work, participating in development through home-based work and linking home-based work with global markets and value chains. “she added.
