August 25, 2007	Saturday	Sha’aban 11, 1428

PESHAWAR, Aug 24: The Pakistan Workers League, an alliance of different workers’ unions, has appealed to the Chief Justice of Pakistan to take suo motu notice of continuous violations of labour laws in commercial and industrial units in both private and public sectors.

Speaking at a news conference here on Friday, PWL president Ishtiaq Ahmed Aasi said working class people had been the target of exploitation in the country. He said successive governments had deprived the working class people of their basic economic rights.

The PWL president said the government had imposed a ban on trade unions in the Pakistan Railways on the pretext of over-staffing and trade union activities.

He said eight years ago the government had claimed that rightsizing and banning of trade union activities would help in decreasing billions of deficit incurred by the railways. But, he added, eight years ago railways’ deficit was Rs9 billion and today it stood at Rs20 billion.

Mr Aasi claimed that on the one hand the government had retrenched employees in the name of downsizing, while on the other it recruited operational staff on contract basis.

He said despite an increase in the prices of essential items, the government had given a minimum increase to the salaries of its employees.

He condemned an increase of Rs10 in the price of a 20kg bag of wheat flour and Rs250 in the price of 5kg tin of edible oil. He claimed that 9 per cent increase in price-hike had been registered in the last two months.