How modern slavery works in Pakistan (9 photos)

The most important thing in creating a modern slave is not to let him learn, so that he remains stupid. The owners of brick factories in Pakistan have learned this rule, which is why they rely on children and distance from schools.





How to make several generations slaves

Pakistan is a poor country, there are many people working for a couple of dollars a day. Therefore, it is very easy to drive a man into debt.



Beautiful figured bricks probably sell for a dollar themselves

The scheme is simple - the owner of a brick factory offers the man to work off the debt at his enterprise. You can live there, and the more family members work, the faster the debt will be repaid.

The family leaves the city, where they settle in a village of makeshift huts. Usually these are settlements for 150 families of the same unfortunates.



In the background is the debtor’s son, he’s 14. He’s been working here since he was 7 years old and still hasn’t paid off his debt.

The debtor begins work at a brick factory. “Factory” is just the name; in fact, it is the production of bricks by hand from molds.

You need to make 500 bricks a day, for which you will receive 1.5 dollars in payment, and the same amount will go towards repaying the debt. Even $150 is a hundred days, not counting interest (which, of course, exists).



500 bricks, this is such a long wall - for one person per day

But if you have a family and someone is sick, $1.50 is not enough for food and medicine.

Therefore, such families usually have debt that only grows over the years.

The greatest value is children



The homes of such families are a masonry of defective bricks, covered with a sun awning.

Families live here for years and have children. There are no schools in the desert; all that children see from childhood is a brick factory. They start working at the age of 7 to support their family.

And for modern slave owners they are more interesting because they have never seen life outside a brick factory.



Brick factory quarries stretch for kilometers

They don't even have money for a bus ticket to go to the city and see a different life.

How to deal with it

All this is prohibited by law; the authorities try to prevent debts from being worked off directly to the person from whom you took the money. They think this will help break the chain of slavery.



Someone's house was built from the work of a seven-year-old child, it's creepy to think about.

But usually the owners of brick factories go into hiding, so it is difficult to prove that you are working for the lender.

Volunteers from large foundations cope more successfully. They can afford to pay off debts, and therefore the freedom of an entire family. Usually it's 500-600 dollars.



Women are welcome in the workplace because they can marry other workers and have a child with family debt

But it is difficult to obtain official consent from the factory owner. He begins to come up with daily percentages and intimidate the workers that they have shelter and work here. And in the outside world they will have to starve.

Children who grew up right at the factory most often believe. And they even run away from the volunteers who came to take them officially to freedom. So receiving a receipt for payment of all debts never guarantees that a person will agree to be free.



Volunteers try to resettle such families as far as possible from their previous place so that the “secret owner” does not find them and intimidate them with the outside world.

If the brick factories weren't so deep in the desert, child workers would see that they could always find another job, learn new skills. The peculiarity of Pakistani slavery is precisely in giving a minimum of opportunities and knowledge about the world to the new generation of slaves.