HYDERABAD, Sept 22: The Hyderabad District Council on Wednesday called for a legislation to ensure 80 per cent jobs in national and multinational industries in the province for local people.

It criticized appointment of people from Punjab in these factories while ignoring local people. Dr Abdul Jaleel Jarwar raised the issue and said that an oil field, located in the Began Jarwar Union Council, should give royalty to the council and jobs to its residents.

Supporting Dr Jarwar, labour councillor Rana Mehmood Ali Khan rapped provincial and federal governments for alleged step-motherly treatment being meted out to Sindh. He claimed that services of hundreds of Sindhi workers of sugar mills had been terminated and people from Punjab had been given jobs there on contract.

He observed that people of Sindh were denied jobs because factory managements feared that they had a knack of forming trade unions to safeguard their rights. He regretted that even general managers and other technical officials were not being appointed from Sindh.

Q. Hakim said people hoped that they would be provided with jobs once oil or gas was discovered in their area but it never happened. He suggested that 30 per cent royalty should be given to area union councils for executing health and education schemes.

Yousuf Qureshi criticized successive Sindh governments for failing to protect interests of the province and said the district government should ensure that in Hyderabad, local people were provided jobs in new industrial units.

Emphasising the need for a survey by each union council in the district to ascertain the number of local and non-local workers in industries, Khushnud Ali Khan said it would help in presenting concrete recommendations to the Sindh government because mere speeches would not solve the issue.

Rauf Jafri and Ibrahim Chishti said nationalists and NGOs flourishing in the name of Sindh should collect the figures and then elected representatives would press the issue at their forums. On a point of order, Mr Hakim questioned legality of commercial schemes of the City Taluka Municipal Administration.