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July 09, 2008	Wednesday	Rajab 5, 1429

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HYDERABAD, July 8: The International Human Rights Commission claimed on Tuesday that 80 per cent of kiln workers were fully satisfied with their employers and workplaces and only 20 per cent had some trivial complaints.

The head of the rights commission, Mr Muzammil Abbas Shirazi, said at a news conference at the press club that the commission found after carrying out a survey of kilns in Hyderabad and Mirpurkhas divisions that there was little truth in stories about large-scale exploitation of workers by kiln owners.

He said that some vested interests were exploiting kiln workers and accused a local organisation that had set up a camp in Tando Haider of inciting workers to agitation against local landlords and kiln owners. The organisation also made video films of workers and sent them abroad, which defamed the country, he said.

“If one talks about rights then all people have equal rights whether they are kiln workers or factory workers of employers,” he said.

He said that the kiln owners of Mirpurkhas and Hyderabad had increased workers’ wages on the request of his organisation from Rs240 per thousand bricks to Rs310, and agreed to provide them free of charge medical facilities.

He claimed that contrary to (bank’s practice) when the kiln work was stopped during rainy season, the owners paid their workers one to two months’ expenses.

He demanded that the government should evolve a strategy for helping forge a working relationship between the employers and the employees and assign the responsibility to labour department to supervise agreements between them.

He said that all the kilns in the country should be registered because the government at present had no record on them. Mr Shirazi demanded that a commission should be appointed to verify facts into a case recently filed against a kiln owner on charges of selling a worker’s kidney.