Trade unions, civil society and labour rights activists on Friday urged the provincial legislatures to initiate debate on workers' rights and suggested them to make amendments in the Sindh Tenancy Act 1950 and other labour laws to ensure livelihood and social security rights to all workers.
They were speaking at a meeting with members of Sindh Assembly, organized by Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (PILER) at a local hotel. Attended by members of Sindh Assembly, including Nusrat Sehar Abbasi, Naheed Begum, Dr Mahesh Kumar Malani, Naila Munir, Sorath Thebo, Kalsoom Chandio, and Dr Sikandar Shoro, the meeting was briefed about non-implementation of the existing labour laws in Sindh.
In 2009, the peasants' rights' activists had started a long march from Hyderabad, which culminated at the Sindh Assembly building in Karachi and the workers' representatives presented a draft of amendments in the Sindh Tenancy Act, 1950 to the Deputy Speaker, the meeting was informed.
A parliamentary committee was later formed, which discussed the Sindh Tenancy Act during the last tenure (2008-2013) and recommended amendments, but unfortunately, those recommendations were not presented before the house. At the end of the tenure (in March 2013), the Sindh Assembly passed some minor amendments in Sindh Tenancy Act, which were actually proved to be counterproductive for the workers, the parliamentarians were told.
The MPAs assured the civil society members that they would raise the issues of agriculture and other workers in the house. They also asked the rights activists to provide the legislators required information about various lacunae in the labour laws.
Speaking on the occasion Karamat Ali, Executive Director of PILER said that presently majority of labour are deprived of their two main rights, right to association and right to collective bargaining, which have been ensured under the Constitution and ILO Conventions.
He asked the members of Sindh Assembly to make a separate law for registration of trade unions on the pattern of India Trade Union Act 1926 for which father of the nation Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah had played his role in the Indian legislative assembly. The law was later adopted by Pakistan after the independence. But, the military dictator Ayub Khan scrapped that important piece of legislation and since then it has not be restored. After the 18th Amendment the labour has become the provincial subject and the Sindh Assembly can adopt that Trade Unions Act, he added.
He also mentioned the lacunae in the recently passed Sindh Prohibition of Employment of Children Bill, 2017 in which minimum age for working of a child has been fixed at 14 years. He said that it is in contradiction of Article 25-A of the Constitution, which ensures that the state would provide compulsory education to every child up to age of 16 years. Under the Child Rights Convention (CRC) the age is fixed at 18 years for work.
Zulfiqar Shah, Joint Director PILER, informed the meeting that Pakistan had ratified 36 Conventions of International Labour Organisation (ILO), including eight core labour standards. Unfortunately, these eight Conventions were also not implemented and required legislations were missing.
Shah mentioned that currently majority of workers who are engaged in agriculture sector are not covered under existing labour laws. There is a separate law which deals with agriculture workers, that is, Sindh Tenancy Act, but majority of agriculture workers are unable to get their rights through this law. He also pointed out that the non-agriculture workers are mostly working in informal sector, which forms 73 percent of the workforce.
Senior trade unions leader Habibuddin Junaidi, Sadiqa Salahuddin from Indus Resource Centre, Raheema Panhwar of Strengthening Participatory Organisation (SPO), Naghma Shaikh of Democracy Reporting International (DRI), Zeenia Shaukat from Sindh Human Rights Commission also attended the meeting and took part in the discussion.
Comments
Comments are closed.