17 April 2004	Saturday	26 Safar 1425

LAHORE April 16: National Workers Party president Abid Hassan Minto has called upon all workers and professionals of the country to unite to meet the challenges of globalization and free market economy.

He was speaking at a meeting of the Punjab Union of Journalists and Lahore Press Club at the Nisar Osmani Auditorium of the club held on Friday in his honour and that of other lawyers of his team who had defended the journalists and newspaper employees in the Supreme Court in the case filed by the APNS challenging the Seventh Wage Board Award.

The Supreme Court had dismissed the case last week for want of jurisdiction. Mr Minto, who was presented a shield, said that globalization and free market economy of the rich countries of the west would have serious repercussions on the economy and workers of the poor countries. Unless they drew up a common strategy and a programme they would not be able to face the drastic consequences of the new challenges.

He said that said that the World Bank and IMF policies had already adversely affected the economies of the countries of Latin America where poverty had increased manifold and the gap between the rich and the poor widened.

The World bank and IMF were imposing similar policies on Pakistan and other countries of South Asia where a special privileged class of the very rich had emerged and teeming millions of poor people of the region were forced to lead a miserable life and they had been deprived of the basic necessities of life.

He said that the government of Pakistan claimed that its economy was progressing as its foreign exchange reserves had swelled to $12 billion. He said that the foreign reserves had been built up mostly by local purchase of dollars by the State Bank of Pakistan and the annual deposits of about $4 billion by the Pakistani immigrants while the real domestic earnings were negligible.

He said that bank interest rates had come down from 17 per cent to eight per cent and the banks were advancing loans generously to their clients for purchase of expensive motorcars on lease. He said that multinational companies had invaded Pakistan and other poor countries where they were heavily investing in opening luxury shops, restaurants and petrol stations, mobile phone companies etc. No indigenous industry was being set up.

The former Supreme Court Bar Association president asked the journalists and newspaper employees to seek the assistance of the lawyers to form legal aid committees in all newspaper centres to help them against violation of labour laws and non-implementation of wage awards.

He hoped that the lawyers' community would come forward to work on the proposed committees. He said that since he himself had been a trade union leader he felt it his duty to help the working class in defending their rights in the courts. He said Article 3 of the Constitution had declared that there would be no exploitation of man by man. The violation of laws of the land depriving workers of their legal rights was exploitation, which could not be tolerated.

He appreciated the proposal put forward by former PFUJ president I.H. Raashed that the matters related to the implementation of the wage award should be settled outside the courts in tripartite meetings with the representatives of the APNS and the federal government.

Another counsel Raja Salman Akram said that there could be no press freedom in a country where there was exploitation of labour. He said that it was also the duty of the lawyers and other sections of the society to ensure that there was no exploitation.

He said that the lawyers' community would always help the journalists in their struggle against exploitation. Other speakers included I.H. Raashed, PUJ president Bakhgeer Chaudhry, general secretary Raja Jalil Hassan Akhtar, and LPC president Arshad Ansari, Aziz Mazhar, Tasawwar Raza of APNEC, Rab Nawaz and Abdul Quddus of APP employees union.