29 January 2005	Saturday	18 Zilhaj 1425

KARACHI, Jan 28: Speakers at a rally on Friday criticizing the privatization policy of the government termed it anti-people and demanded that the policy be abolished immediately.

The rally was organized by the Labour Party Pakistan at Karachi Press Club to protest against the privatization policy of the government. Nisar Shah, Haji Bashir, Ghani Zaman, Dildar Ahmad, Nazir Ahmad, Sattar Niazi, Sohail Raza and other leaders addressed the rally.

They demanded that all organizations which had been privatized so far should be nationalized and all the workers who had been sacked from such organizations under different pretexts should be reinstated.

The leaders said that the government had adopted privatization policy on the directives of international financial institutions. Owing to the mass scale privatization of national assets, the level of unemployment had increased manifolds which had also raised the level of poverty.

Terming the promulgation of Industrial Relations Ordinance, 2002 anti-workers, they said that the black law must be abolished and urged that some pro-worker legislation should be formulated so that rights of workers could be safe guarded.

Maintaining that the government under a planned strategy is in the process of uprooting the trade union movement, the leaders demanded that the prices of petroleum products must be brought down as any enhancement in fuel prices led to the chain reaction owing to which prices of all the essential commodities increased.

Criticizing the posting of army officials in civil organizations, they demanded that all such officials be sent back to their parent organization. Regarding the issue of privatization of the educational institutions, the leaders demanded that no educational institutions be handed over to the private party as it would lead to enhancement in fee structure.

Carrying placards inscribed with their demands, the protesters chanted slogans in support of their demands. The protesters had earlier gathered at Regal Chowk in Saddar from where they marched towards the Press Club, where the procession turned into a rally.

Meanwhile, speakers at another rally on Friday condemned the proposed privatization of the Karachi Electricity Supply Corporation and warned that if the decision was not taken back they would resort to "extreme action" on Feb 3.

Addressing the protesters at the rally, organized by the KESC Employees Action Committee at the Press Club, the leaders said that the date of "extreme action" had been fixed keeping in view Feb 4th deadline on which the government was to take an important step in its process of KESC privatization.

They pointed out that the private party would sack a large number of KESC employees after its privatization that would make the unemployment scenario further grim.

The speakers alleged that the government was working on the directives of the international financial institutions and was handing over the precious national assets to foreigners at rock bottom prices.

They rejected government's claim that the KESC was being privatized as it had been facing financial losses and said that one of the main reasons for the power company's losses was that its chief executives and top management were not professionals.

They were from law enforcement agencies and not trained to run the public utility organizations, the protesting leaders said. They demanded that highly qualified professionals should be hired to run the organization instead of privatization.

The leaders also demanded that the ban imposed on trade union activities in KESC for the last many years should immediately be lifted. They said that the ban was not only against the basic rights guaranteed in the Constitution but was also against various International Labour Organization conventions signed by the government.

A similar ban was imposed on WAPDA and other organizations, but the government had to lift the ban when the ILO and other such organizations approached the government. However, they regretted that the rights of the KESC workers had not yet been restored.

They said that KESC was supplying power to many sensitive facilities, which would become vulnerable to foreigners following the privatization of KESC. The protesters also expressed apprehension that once the private party took over the KESC it would increase the power tariff which would affect the masses.

The industry, particularly the export oriented units, would also suffer as they would not be able to compete with the products of foreign companies. Akhlaq Khan, Latif Nizamani, Latif Mughal, Usman Baloch, Shahzad Khan, Ayaz Mengal, Aslam Samoon, Karamat Hussain, Mazhar Abbas, Shaikh Majeed, Manzoor Razi, Jaleel Shah, Farid Awan, Saeed Ghani, Chaudhri Aslam, and others also addressed the rally.