KARACHI, Dec 14: Speakers at a seminar on Saturday stressed that awareness regarding globalization be created and spread among the masses so that they knew its real effects on the people.
Speaking at the seminar on globalization and its effects organized jointly by the Women And Development Association (WADA) and the Forum for Peace and Development, they said that lack of awareness at the grassroots level was probably the reason the protest demonstrations against globalization had not been as massive here as the demonstrations held in other countries had been.
They also criticized western countries for using the issue of human rights as an arm-twisting tool and supporting military regimes that let loose reigns of terror against democratic forces when it suited their interests.
They said that with globalization geographic and political boundaries were disappearing and capital became more free, being easily transferred in the form of foreign investment. They said big multinational companies were taking over smaller companies, owing to which monopolies were being created with the rich getting richer and the poor poorer.
They said that globalization was even against the interests of the working classes of the developed and rich countries as the companies there were shifting their labour intensive operations to the developing countries where cheap labour, employer-friendly labour laws and usually corrupt ruling elite existed. They said that due to the shifting of labour intensive operations the companies in the west were shedding their workers, who are paid many times more than their counterparts in the less developed countries, which was causing unemployment there.
They said that only huge multinational companies of the industrialized world benefited from globalization and those companies had become so rich, big and influential that they dictated policies to and changed governments in the poor countries to suit their interests.
They said multinationals had surplus capital and surplus products which they could not sell in their developed countries with comparatively small population, so they were pushing globalization hard so that the markets of the developing countries were opened to them.
They said that after crippling the local industry, multinationals were now entering the farming sector through corporate agriculture. They said it would play havoc with poor farmers who were already being exploited by landlords and other rural influentials.
They said those companies went for mono-culture crops and would use genetically modified seeds that would require chemical and synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, that would severly affect the yield of the land in the long run.
They said that it was a one-way globalization process where only capital was allowed to move freely without boundaries, whereas workers were not allowed to move freely to other countries where working conditions were favourable.
They said that already privatization, right-sizing and down-sizing had made a large number of workers jobless, and corporate farming would render jobless many farmers both men and women.
They said that women being the weaker section would be the worst victim of mass scale unemployment, and because of economic stress and pressures in the family, incidence of domestic violence and violence against women and children would rise. Mass scale unemployment among women could lead to the their being forced to enter into prostitution or being trafficked.
They said that so far the real effects of globalization had not reached the country, but in a couple of years the people would have its real taste when the country would have to bring down customs tariffs and the local products made by inefficient industry would have to compete with foreign goods. One of the speakers said that under the recently announced IRO 2002 trade unions had been banned in many organizations. A representative of the Amnesty International also read out a statement on the occasion. Ghulam Kibria, M. B. Naqvi, Zubaidah Mustafa, Najma Sadiq, Dr Haroon Ahmad, Anees Haroon, Fahmida Riaz, Azhar Jatoi, Dr Riaz, Manzoor Razi, Kauser Javed Qaimkhani and others spoke on the occasion.
