LAHORE, Jan 2: The Pakistan Workers Confederation has opposed the devolution of the Labour Department to the district level on the ground that it would make the implementation of labour laws completely impossible.

This was stated by the members of a delegation, led by PWC Secretary-General Khurshid Ahmad, during a meeting with the Punjab Labour Welfare Director here on Thursday.

The director was informed that even the partial implementation of labour laws would become impossible after devolution.

The labour department officials at the district level were not in a position to get the labour laws implemented from the influential industrialists.

The delegation members told the director that most industrial and commercial employers were hiring employees on contract basis and had stopped issuing appointment letters to them. They were also not implementing the law in respect of hiring regular employees for jobs of permanent nature and paying the prescribed minimum wages to them.

Most employers had deprived the workers of social security and Old Age Benefits Institution facilities by avoiding contributing to the two schemes.

They said that the employers were denying the legal benefits to the workers because of restrictions imposed on the trade union rights of the workers under the Industrial Relations Ordinance 2002.

The responsibility of ensuring implementation of the labour laws rested entirely on the district governments which were too week to compel the powerful industrial tycoons to respect the law.

Labour laws could only be implemented if the department was not devolved to the district level and the provincial government continued fulfilling the responsibility.