08 February 2004	Sunday	16 Zilhaj 1424

THATTA, Feb 7: Some 1.8 million people in five districts of the Sindh province are working as bonded labour and the victims can only be provided with relief if political parties coordinated with the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.

This was observed by speakers at a training workshop on "Abolition of Bonded Labour in Pakistan", organized at the press club here on Saturday by the HRCP for district vigilance committees.

Sindh HRCP vice-chairman Ali Hassan, Sindh Hari Union president Master Lal Jee, Jam Saqi, People's Party Parliamentarians leader MPA Humera Alwani, Dr Mumtaz Uqaili, Yar Mohammad Jalalani, Mehboob Brohi and others spoke on the occasion.

Speakers said the victims, working under compulsion in Thatta, Badin, Sanghar, Mirpurkhas and Hyderabad districts, could be relieved of their miseries through coordination of different sectors of the society with the HRCP.

They regretted that the Sindh Tenancy Act, 1952, could not be implemented, with the result that several peasants were languishing in private jails on the pretext of loans owed to landlords.

They proposed that 2,000 acres of agricultural land, 850 acres of state land now in possession of bandits in the Nawabshah district and such other lands should be allotted to released peasants to provide them with a permanent source of livelihood. They said 4,500 children were incarcerated at various prisons.

Dr Uqaili observed that many countries had become bonded labour under the yoke of the imperial West where a single power enforced its directions. The UN and the ILO were only working to get the agenda of the USA achieved, he claimed.