April 27, 2007	Friday	Rabi-us-Sani 09, 1428

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PESHAWAR, April 26: Speakers at a seminar held here on Thursday stressed the need for replacing “outworn” labour laws with new ones that ensure workers’ well-being and meet global market trends.

The seminar on “Understanding Labour Issues” was organised by the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency, an Islamabad-based NGO, for labour leaders, NWFP assembly members and officials of the labour department at a local hotel.

NWFP Minister for Labour and Industry Malik Zafar Azam said over 40 per cent of the people of the province lived below the poverty line because “we are short of infrastructure facilities, living in a region far from the seaport and having thin industrialisation”.

He said the NWFP could not compete with the other provinces whose investment volume was higher.

“We have asked the Central Board of Revenue to allow us land route access up to Central Asian States and Afghanistan for trade activities, but we have not been allowed that. At present, we send our goods first to Karachi, from where they are shipped to Afghanistan,” he said.

The minister said the province had offered 25 per cent rebate on electricity as an incentive to industrialists, but their response was not too encouraging. He said the provincial government had decided to conduct a detailed survey of sick units in different industrial estates so that their productivity could be increased again.

He said that of the 135 sick units, 35 were in running condition in Swat alone. Earlier, he said, 36,000 people worked in sick units, but now there were only 5,000 workers.

About the Gadoon Industrial Estate, he said it had failed to make any real progress. He said a powerful mafia had exploited unprecedented facilities provided there and then left for Punjab and Karachi.

He said coal miners, whose work was very tough, were given the status of industrial workers last year.

Chairman of the Workers-Employers’ Bilateral Council of Pakistan, Javed Ahmad, held the civilian bureaucracy responsible for many of the ills plaguing industrial and labour sectors. He underlined the need for freeing the industrialisation process from “the clutches of the bureaucracy”.

He said vocational training could help arrest unemployment. “We have 70 labour laws, but most of them have become outdated.”

MPA Arshad Khan claimed that privatisation had paved the way for exploitation of national assets and it promoted corruption in high places. He said 800 industrial units were closed, which had rendered 63,000 workers unemployed.

He claimed that the Charsadda Paper Mills, one of the biggest paper mills in Asia having assets worth Rs2 billion, had been auctioned for Rs125 million.