KARACHI: Importance of dialogue for labour welfare stressed
By Our Staff Reporter
KARACHI, Sept 4: Speakers at a seminar on Thursday stressed that all the stake-holders, the government, workers and employers,must join hands to meet the fast approaching challenges of globalization for the country to survive in the global economy.
They were speaking at the inaugural session of the three-day international seminar on “Sustainable Human Development and Social Dialogue”, organized by the All Pakistan Trade Union Congress (APTUC) and sponsored by the Belgium-based International Institute of Workers Education.
Sindh Labour Secretary Raja M. Abbas said that the labour policy announced by the government last year had a stronger element of social dialogue.
He expressed the hope that the seminar would provide opportunities to the participants to understand the policies of international financial institutions and the importance of social dialogue as an instrument for social peace, political stability, conflict prevention and sustainable economic development.
The World Bank’s country director John W. Wall, in his message read out at the seminar, said that the bank’s mission was to fight and reduce poverty, and over 85 per cent of the bank’s assistance to Pakistan had been used for expanding and rehabilitating physical infrastructure.
He said the bank wished to assist Pakistan in its endeavours aimed at poverty reduction, growth, investment, job creation and utalization of resources.
He said that the bank’s country assistance strategy and Pakistan’s poverty reduction strategy were in sync and support of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) aimed at halving world’s poverty and illiteracy by the year 2015.
The representative of the International Labour Organization, J. Lokollo, in his message said that the ILO was providing assistance to the government to achieve MDGs in the government’s efforts to create employment, provide social security and do labour market analysis.
Earlier, APTUC secretary general Shouket Ali said that the seminar, besides enhancing the knowledge of trade unions, intended to enhance their capacities to offer alternatives. He said it also intended to reinforce tared unions in the field of social and economic development and their active involvement in social dialogue.
He said that the challenges of globalization and the negative effects of application of the WTO regulations were not the problems of trade unions alone, but these would affect the whole industrial relations system and all the stake-holders — workers, government and employers — would have to find an answer that could meet national aspirations, and which could afford justice and equitable working environment for the working class.
C. G. Gomez of the National Workers Congress, who has come Sir Lanka and Mukhlesur Rehman of the Bangladesh Sanjukta Sramic Federation, Ehsanullah Khan of the Workers Employers Bilateral Council of Pakistan (WEBCOP), Syed Hakim Ali Shah Bokhari of NILAT, Dr Aliya Khan, Ameena Khan, Sarwari Khan and others also spoke at the inaugural session. Later, Kaiser Bengali, Abdul Ghafoor Baloch and others spoke at the working session.
Twenty-five delegates belonging to various affiliated unions of the APTUC from all over the country, six overseas delegates — Mukhlesur Rehman, Mukaddem Hosain from Bangladesh and Mohsinul Kabir of the BSSF, and C. G. Gomez. J. A. M. Gonsal and P. N. Cooray from Sri Lanka — are also participating in the seminar.
