Support Minority Hindu BAJANI Communities

Update Situation of children & women in Tharparkar:

Children and women of Tharparkar are most affected by natural disaster like droughts, floods and heavy rains, and malnutrition the household poverty that holds nearly a 90 % population in its grip.  Mostly children are engaged in wood cutting for sale and house use, subsequent to livestock and avail water from 4 to 6 kilometers way from their native villages.  Children from the poorest households are regularly deprived of from attaining access to health and education services that are already either inadequate or underutilized. They are also the members of society who are most affected by customs, social norms and traditional practices which can expose them to neglect, exploitation and abuse. More than 1,500 children under the age of five have died in the Tharparkar district since 2011. Each year, as the death toll climbs, reports are sought, commissions created and emergency plans announced by the provincial government.

Normally parents do not take interest in the education of their children due to many factors including poverty and illiteracy. In some schools, if teachers made contacts with parents for the betterment of schools, parents or local communities do not encourage her/him. issues include weak capacities of School Management Committees (SMCs) about School Governance, missing facilities in schools, non friendly teaching style of teachers, support staff sometimes threatens women teachers, poor security of school building and assets during summer vacations and less facilitation from department to teachers.

Although child marriage is technically against the law in Pakistan, 70 per cent of girls are married by the age of 18, and 20 per cent by the age of 13; predictably, the figures are especially high in district Tharparkar.  Some children are found in domestic labor in Tharparkar; most of these children enter into domestic labor due to poverty and come from rural backgrounds.  Children and women are bought, sold, “rented”, or kidnapped to work in carpet making, illegal begging, and domestic servitude and in bonded labor. 

The Thari women usually wear long skirts “Ghagras” and work in fields with their men and help them to grow wheat and other seasonal items. Their faces are usually covered with veils. They mostly wear silvery jewelry. This veil is used as a protection against sand and harsh sun rays and it also secure them for the envious sight of men. The unmarried, widow and married wear totally different clothes from each other so that they can be easily identified. The unmarried girls generally cover their whole arm by wearing bangles. Thari women mostly communicate with the people of their own castes to marry in their family. Chances of meeting women of out-of-caste become much restricted with superior status because the caste of higher class will make strict analysis. It’s a picture of beauty and adversity, for beneath the alarming mortality figures are deeper issues hampering human existence in this geographically, culturally and religiously complex district of almost 2.26 million people Poverty, population growth, lack of clean drinking water, unemployment and high illiteracy rates have seemingly trapped the region in a state of catastrophe. The women of Tharparkar do not have the ‘luxury.

The study has shown that the desert community women are facing three kinds of problems. Social problems, which include indigenous community culture of keeping women, deprived from education, economic autonomy and primary health care facilities. Child age marriage, teen pregnancy, and early menarche are few to mention coming to the reproductive health problems.  A study showed that only 13% women had adequate health care facility and Maternal Mortality rate (MMR) is 388 per 100,000 deliveries and sex ratio 139 girls for 1000 boys, having identical reproductive and general health problems as found in our study.  Marriage age has increased span of pregnancy and multiple infections.  

In the humanitarian crisis-hit Tharparkar which has the highest under-five mortality rate in Pakistan, women and children eat less than men, finds a fact-finding mission of the United Nations. “Men are given the first priority at meals and often eat more than women and children whereas the main food eaten was onion, chilli, bread and vegetables (guar and singharian)”, the mission observes.