LAHORE: Provincial Secretaries of Industries, Labour and Environment on Friday gave their unequivocal assurance to the LCCI that the industry would not be harassed under the guise of compliance with various regulatory requirements relating to industrial safety, environment and labour in particular.

Provincial Secretary Industries Dr Shujaat Ali, Secretary Labour Hassan Iqbal and Secretary Environment Saeed Wahla were speaking at a seminar on Industrial Safety jointly orgainsed by Industries Department and the Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) at its premises. Provincial Secretary Industries Dr Shujaat Ali said all the departments were ready to sit with the stakeholders to sort out the issues being faced by the industry.

He said they were well aware of the challenges and taking necessary measures to overcome them, adding the government was under tremendous pressure to implement industrial safety measures.

He urged the LCCI President to form Focus Groups to identify problems for their amicable solution in consultation with the private sector. “The concerned government departments would be asked to sit with LCCI Focus Groups and find out solutions.”

Secretary Labour Hassan Iqbal said that a joint team of District and Provincial governments had completed the survey of the industry in Punjab and those industrial units would be visited to educate them about the industrial rules and regulations. He made it clear that all the government efforts towards industrial safety would remain fruitless until and unless the private sector played its role.

LCCI President Farooq Iftikhar called for a comprehensive review of the industrial legal framework in consultation with the private sector to make that most pressing industrial safety issues were addressed without undermining the confidence of the business community.

He said it was very unfortunate that the main law governing Occupational Health & Safety (OHS) was the Factories Act 1934 but the health and safety measures prescribed in it and in related laws had not kept pace with the rapidly changing times.

Farooq Iftikhar said the confidence of the business community was at its lowest ebb pertaining to perceived heavy handedness of regulatory authorities trying to enforce complex industrial safety standards such as those related to environment, location and infrastructure related shortcomings.

In the wake of recent industrial safety related incidents, the regulatory authorities were trying to do too much and too fast without first ensuring that the industry was fully aware of and educated about such compliance requirements, he added.  The LCCI President said that two other factors namely low literacy and high level of informal economic activities further complicated the compliance of industrial safety.