The Weight They Carry, The Fire They Feed

Asem Mustafa Awan
Islamabad: For millions of Pakistani families, putting a meal on the table begins with a journey for fuel.
Women walk along roadsides and through settlements carrying bundles of dried crop roots, firewood and cow dung on their heads. What looks like a daily chore is, for many, the price of survival. The burden is physical, but the poverty behind it is far heavier.
For generations, clean and affordable household energy has remained beyond the reach of many poor families. When gas supplies are unreliable or expensive alternatives are unaffordable, there is little choice but to return to what can be collected from the land.
The women carry the fuel home. Someone will cook with it. A family will eat. Another day will pass.
Pakistan’s poverty figures underline how widespread the struggle remains. Under the World Bank’s updated international poverty line for lower-middle-income countries, 47.1 per cent of Pakistan’s population was estimated to be living below $4.20 a day in 2024, with the rate projected at 45 per cent for FY2025.
These women are not statistics. They are mothers, daughters and workers carrying the cost of a life in which survival comes before comfort.
A country cannot measure progress only through roads, buildings and economic figures. Progress must also be visible in the lives of those who no longer have to carry their fuel home on their heads.
Photo Credit APP