HYDERABAD: Hari Welfare Association (HWA) has demanded to activate the District Vigilance Committees (DVCs) in all districts of Sindh, especially in flood-hit areas of provinces.
This was stated by President of HWA Akram Khaskheli along with peasants Hussain Bux Chutto, Sabir Hussain Chutto, Shahzad Ahmed and others in a press conference at Nawabshah Press Club.
Khaskheli said that Sindh and the federal governments have turned a deaf ear to the peasants and workers who lost their crops, wages, cattle and houses during rains and floods started in August 2022. He said Sindh government failed to protect peasants and workers during and after the rains and floods, which caused peasants and workers to become easy prey to greedy and exploitative landlords.
HWA said that in the absence of government support most peasants and farm workers have started working under informal terms and conditions determined by landlords, in which poor families are getting loans/ peshgi/ advance to survive through their tough times.
He said that such sharecropping informal arrangements result in debt bondage, which was already on the rise without being monitored and checked by the district vigilance committees.
In 2021, 14 District Vigilance Committees were formed in only 14 districts of Sindh under the Sindh Bonded Labour System Abolition Act 2015, but none of these are functional; thus, there is no monitoring of the implementation of the Act. However, during and after floods, there is a dire role of the DVCs.
HWA leader said that there are thousands of peasants and rural workers’ families in 17 districts of Sindh without adequate shelter, work, work opportunities, minimum wages, and safe drinking water, health and education services. He added that governments rather than helping to restore their lives by providing them with shelters and livelihood opportunities have turned a mass of flood-affected peasants and rural workers into beggars.
Khaskheli said that peasants of Sindh are extremely upset on Sindh government’s appeal petition in the Supreme Court of Pakistan against the Sindh High Court Hyderabad bench’s landmark judgement that had struck down Section-6 of the Sindh Tenancy (Amendment) Act, 2013 whereby Section 24-C of the Sindh Tenancy Act, 1950 was amended to omit prohibition of Begaar (unpaid work or work). The judgement had also ruled that after the separation of judiciary from executive, assistant commissioners, additional commissioners and commissioners/ collectors did not have powers to make decisions in judicial matters under sections 27, 29 and 30 of the Sindh Tenancy Act, and such executive’s actions are against the provisions of Article 175, 202 and 203 of the Constitution of Pakistan.
Akram Khaskheli said that the Sindh High Court had also ordered the government to make amendments in the Sindh Tenancy Act 1950 and take necessary measures including transferring of all peasants’ cases under the STA to the judiciary. However, instead of complying with the High Court’s decision and protecting the rights of peasants in the tyrannical feudal system and structure, the government has sided with feudal lords.
He urged federal and provincial governments to provide relief and support to peasants and rural workers rather than rich landlords. Also take extra-ordinary measures to remove water from centres of the many rural districts of Sindh, and provide houses/ shelters and state lands for cultivating crops. He also demanded that governments should immediately compensate peasants, and farm workers for the loss of their livelihoods, houses, cattle and lives. He asked the government to withdraw from an appeal filed in the Supreme Court and amend the STA in light of the UN Declaration and Sindh High Court’s verdict, and also take necessary measures ordered under the same verdict.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
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