When a family doesn’t have anything to eat or a loved one falls ill, families sell everything they have to pay for their medical care. When that is not enough, they take a loan from the brick kiln owners and sign a contract to work until the debt is repaid. They are then exploited, paid a fraction of the agreed price (often as little as 10c per hour) as the debt balloons with interest and fees. The workers are forced to work for 12-14 hours a day, seven days a week, for the rest of their lives. When they die, their children inherit their debt and are forced to remain in slavery. These people are mistreated, abused and robbed of their wages day after day.

We are witnessing the atrocities of slavery since we started sharing the Gospel on brick kilns. Surrounded by people whose lives were stripped away brick by brick, I have seen first-hand the devastating grip that the brick-kiln industry in Pakistan has on millions of people.

Forced to work at gunpoint from dawn to dusk, young children, elders, men and women are all tortured at the hands of wealthy kiln owners who rape them, humiliate them, and leave them to suffer in poverty without food, clothing, and shelter. Though bonded labor has been illegal in Pakistan since 1992, over 25,000 brick kilns operate across the country, trapping at least 4.5 million workers in a vicious cycle. Especially in rural areas, illiterate and desperate people are tricked into accepting small loans in exchange for working in the kilns.