All industrial units in Southern Punjab had closed their one shift due to persistent load shedding rendering more than one lakh workers jobless, said a labour leader Ashfaq Ahmed Khan while talking to newsmen here on Saturday.
He said that load shedding has forced over three million labourers on daily wages across the country to sit idle in their homes and wait till the power crisis is over. In addition, over 42,000 factory workers have also been affected and left without any regular sources of income, he added.
Because of heavy load shedding, many small factories are not working and more than three million labourers are sitting idle. "The main reason for this joblessness is privatisation of several public entities," he said, adding the private companies had reduced the number of employees and increased working hours without paying them extra money.
"Before the privatisation of Pakistan Telecommunication Limited (PTCL), the total number of its employees was 65,000 but after privatisation, just 30,000 employees are now working in the organisation," he said.
He said Habib Bank was the biggest bank of Pakistan with 1,425 branches in the country and almost 48 world-wide branches but it was sold out at a throwaway price of Rs 22 billion. "The number of its employees has now been reduced to 7,000, which is four times less than what it was before the privatisation," he added.
He said flour price had reached Rs 30 per kilogram, which was beyond the reach of poor labourers. "In 116 cities, people stand in queues for hours to get flour but mostly return empty handed," he said.
He said that government had fixed the minimum salary of unskilled labourers at Rs 4,600 per month but the mill owners were paying them much lower wages, adding, the government had banned unions, which stood up for rights of under-paid and unemployed labourers.