The Sindh Assembly on Monday adopted the Sindh factories law to regulate matters pertaining to manufacturing units in the province, repealing the Factories Act 1934, besides adopting another law effectively restoring the pre-2002 status of the defunct Karachi Development Authority, as part of a series of legislations denuding the yet to be functional local bodies'' system of the metropolis of control over city''s civic bodies.
The factories law came to make regulations for factories since the 18th Constitutional Amendment has devolved the labor subject to the provinces. However, the law permits factories to employee workers aged between 14 years and 18 years but with a separate registration. But labourer aged below 14 is prohibited to work at the factory.
It asks the factories to provide paid holidays on festivals to the workers which either the Sindh or Federal Governments had declared. The law also enables every worker to attain 10 causal and 16 medical leave in a year with full-pay and restrict working hours for women between 7 am to 7 pm.
The house also adopted a law to restore the defunct Karachi Development Authority to its 2002 position. Thus, the law frees KDA from Karachi Metropolitan Cooperation''s control. The MQM opposed the legislation. Now with the law in place, KDA will function under the Sindh Local Bodies'' Minister. A majority also rejected the MQM''s amendment suggesting the KDA should be run by the city''s mayor. Like other authorities, the Sindh government will run KDA affairs. MQM''s lawmaker Syed Sardar Ahmed asked that what job had been left for Karachi''s mayor to do following the Sindh government''s moves to control KDA, KWSB, KBCA and other such civic institutions.
"Mayors govern the civic departments in big cities world-wide," he told the house. However, Sindh Senior Parliamentary Affairs Minister Nisar Khuhro replied that the legislation was aimed at regulating the KDA to encourage the housing industry and provide low-cost residence to the people. He said that the KDA had developed huge projects but its merger into the KMC had ruined it.
MQM''s Khalid Ahmed said that the metropolis was ruled like an ''orphan'' and slammed the PPP-led Sindh government for reinstating KDA to its former status. "After the MQM got a majority in local bodies polls the government came to realise that KDA should be restored," he said, adding that "the government is imposing a democratic dictatorship."
Sindh Local Bodies Minister Jam Khan Shoro said that the KDA before its merger into KMC had completed 40 residential projects. "China-cutting swallowed up KDA''s land," he told the house, saying that "no development authority in the country was devolved except the KDA".
The MQM lawmakers also staged a protest walkout from the house against the arrest of deputy convenor of their party''s co-ordination committee. The legislators returned to the house after staying out briefly. Syed Khalid Ahmed regretted the arrest of Shahid Pasha.
The house also adopted The Sindh Terms of Employment (Standing Orders) Bill 2015, The Sindh Service Tribunal (Amendment) Bill 2015 and The Sindh Shops and Commercial Establishment Bill 2015. The house stands adjourned till Tuesday morning. Latter, the PPP lawmakers staged a protest sit-in outside the assembly hall against the federal government for allowing the former military chief and president, Pervez Musharraf to go abroad. They shouted anti-government slogans.