Quoting reliable sources, a Recorder Report appearing the other day has made the disconcerting revelation that Sindh Minimum Wages Board (SMWB) has failed to implement the provision of Rs 6,000 per month as the minimum wage for industrial workers. It will be noted that the increase in wages from Rs 4600 to Rs 6000 formed part of the 12-point labour-friendly package announced by the federal Labour Minister on the occasion of May Day, this year.
Of course, a federal government initiative, it fell on the related departments of the provinces to fix the wages in their respective industrial sectors. However, although SMWB had got published its recommendations in respect of the categories of the industries in the official Gazette dated 15th July, 2008, inviting objections, suggestions within 30 days, during which no objections and suggestions were stated to have been received.
But, despite having its own field officers to deal with the matter and to implement its decisions, SMWB seems to have deemed it worthwhile to deviate from the norm in the tradition set in 2002, by the then Chairman of the Board, who had reportedly stopped the field officers from conducting the survey and got the whole process completed, including the fixation of wages, by courtesy of the labour department instead.
This, obviously, is apt to make confusion worse confounded, as by doing so it will appear to have unnecessarily allowed its own field staff leisurely to while away time within the office premises. For the disorderly manner in which the entire task of fixation of labour wages has been handled will be seen as causing serious disarray, to the dismay of the industrial labour, on the one hand, and embarrassment to the government, on the other.
Reference, in this regard, may also be made to the disclosure that the government of Punjab has fixed the minimum wages for some 50 industries, and in Sindh it has been for around 36 industries.
It was only a day earlier that a news report had pointed to the disenchantment of the industrial labour in Sindh, as about 50 percent of industries were reportedly not complying with the government's decision of raising their minimum wages to Rs 6,000, from Rs 4,600, thereby adding to their misery.
According to the report, provincial government had asked SMWB to fix the wages and that it had fixed Rs 6,000 minimum wage for unskilled labourers working in 36 categories of industry. Again, as it pointed out, fairly large is the list of industries falling under the jurisdiction of the Sindh government.
These include auto workshops and garages, bidi binding, cement, ceramic, cotton, ginning and pressing, chemicals, construction, cycle, electric appliances, flour mills, food, furniture and wood working, glass, hotels, iron steel and fabricated metal, machine made carpets, machinery, paints and varnish, paper products, petroleum, pharmaceuticals, plastic, printing presses, readymade garments, rice husking, road transport, rubber, silk/rayon units and power loom, soap manufacturing, sugar, tannery, textile, tobacco and transport equipment.
Again, it had revealed that complaints of non-implementation of revised wages were being filed, and that a meeting of officers of all districts, including Karachi, would be held on December 30, 2008 to chalk out the future course of action.
Meanwhile, Central Senior Vice President of All Pakistan Trade Unions Organisation Habibuddin Junaidi, lamented that, the private sector was not giving any importance to the decision of the government, stressing the need for ensuring implementation of the decision in letter and spirit.