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Mumbai: Vegetable
vendor Salma fights for the rights of the city's street vendors
and has been jailed many times. Now the 26-year-old is going to an
international conference in Brazil to speak about Indian domestic
workers, labourers and hawkers.
Salma, whose full name is Anis Fatima Shaikh, started selling
vegetables from the age of seven even as she continued to study
till Class 12 as a private student, and one day she took up the
cause of the street vendors after she was harassed by government
officials.
"I then started to gather legal information about the rights of
hawkers (street vendors) and labourers. I then helped other
hawkers fight for their rights," said Salma, a leader of the Azad
Hawkers Union, a part of the National Association of Street
Vendors of India (NASVI).
"I have been imprisoned on a few occasions and when I read the
names of the freedom fighters on the walls of the jail, I got
inspired to fight for my cause," she said.
Salma will be attending the May 21-24 Global Network Conference in
the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro.
"Sixty participants from 20 countries will be at the conference.
It will bring together people from trade unions, labour and human
rights activists from Asia, Africa, Latin America, Arab countries
and Europe," Salma told IANS in fluent English.
The Global Network is an alliance of labour organisations,
established in 2001 by Solidar, a European network of NGOs working
for social justice, and the International Federation of Workers'
Education Associations from South Africa.
"NASVI is associated with Global Network and suggested my name for
the conference," she said.
She will be the lone Indian representative in the conference on
'The Role of Labour Movement in Shaping the International
Cooperation Agenda after 2015'.
She is however not new to international conferences, having flown
to Nairobi in Kenya to speak on child street vendors at the World
Social Forum six years ago.
The second of three sisters and two brothers, Salma had to drop
out of school at the age of seven to help her parents sell
vegetables.
"But I never gave up studies. I kept studying through notes and
books of other children. Two years back, I appeared for my Class
10 exams privately and last month I passed my Class 12 exams," she
said.
"I'm glad my parents take pride in my achievements," she said.
(Mauli Buch can be contacted at mauli.b@ians.in)
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