HYDERABAD, Aug 24: The National Labour Federation has rejected the Industrial Relations Ordinance, 2002, and said its promulgation and repeal of the 1969 IRO after the general election was based on mala fide intention.
Speaking at a news conference here on Sunday, NLF president Mohammad Islam, provincial president Rana Mehmood Ali Khan and deputy general-secretary Shahid Ayub said the promulgation of the ordinance was illegal as the National Assembly was in place at that time.
They said the late Umer Asghar Khan, then federal minister for labour, had formulated a labour policy and draft amendments to labour laws but his recommendations were not considered and the 2002 IRO was promulgated in haste.
They said the ordinance was anti-workers as it would deprive the working class of its rights and facilities.
Giving examples, the NLF leaders said the labour court and the National Industrial Relation Commission had been shorn of many of their powers, factory union had been deprived of its right to get the balance sheet of the factory audited for the second time, labour appellate tribunal had been abolished and the high court had been declared as the appellate court and trade unions had been bound down to get their annual accounts audited through an auditor authorized by the trade union registrar. Not only this, but the authority of the labour court to reinstate dismissed workers had also been taken away, they added.
They said the ordinance should be repealed as it had rendered trade unions ineffective.
The NLF leaders were of the opinion that workers of Sindh were suffering more because of what they called an alliance between the government and industrialists.
They regretted that 40 per cent of industrial units were lying closed in Sindh, investment in the province was stopped and closed units were not being reactivated. Several workers were not issued appointment letters and attendance, social security and pension cards, depriving the workers, specially associated with the bangle industry, of medical and old age benefits, they further said.
They said labour laws had become misnomer in Kotri, Nooriabad, Thatta and Hyderabad industrial and trading estates. They condemned the ban on inspection of factories to check implementation of labour laws.
