UMERKOT: Lawyers, civil society activists and representatives of workers have demanded the provincial government set up peasant courts to serve speedy justice to farm workers and revisit the Sindh Tenancy Act to make it compatible with the changing times.

They were speaking at a consultation meeting organised by the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (PILER) at the district bar association here on Saturday.

They deplored that farm workers failed to get their due share in the harvest and continued to suffer hardships and exploitation because of government failure to enforce relevant laws.

Punhal Sario of Sindh Hari Porhiat Council said that great advancements in the farm sector and increasing use of machines had greatly changed the situation. It required now to revisit and redesign the law to protect the rights of the oppressed, he said.

He recalled that in 1950, peasants who had arrived from different areas of Sindh had besieged the Sindh Assembly during its session as a result of which the assembly passed the Sindh Tenancy Act, which had now become obsolete.

At that time, fine for violation of the law was fixed at only Rs500, equal to the then price of 10 tola gold just to make the landlords realise the rights of the farm workers, he said.

He said that afterwards a series of such campaigns were launched culminating in a Hari Long March of 15,000 people who reached Sindh Assembly and handed over a memorandum with a charter of demands to the deputy speaker.

The major demands included legal support and establishment of peasant courts to safeguard their rights. Nowadays, peasants had been reduced to bonded labour, who were forced to live in subhuman conditions, he said.

He said that peasants deserved their due share in the produce because they were the main contributors to national exchequer. They needed to have a law to protect their rights. The PPP government had assured the peasants of setting up legal aid committee and set up peasant courts to protect their rights but it had not yet fulfilled the promise, he said.

At present, he said, increasing use of machinery in the farm sector had changed the situation which necessitated a change in the laws to safeguard rights of peasants who were being forced to bear all expenses of the machinery.

Advocate Ali Hassan Chandio shared his experiences about the cases related to the Tenancy Act and said that mukhtiarkars and other revenue officials almost always supported landlords. They never helped peasants get their rights, he added.

Because of being illiterate, peasants almost never filed petitions in tribunals to get their rights as per law. Today, persistent water shortage was affecting both peasants and landlord alike because they could not cultivate crops and face huge losses, he said, adding that to protect peasants from losses, there should be insurance of crops.

Mohammad Ismail Kumbhar advocate said that once he appeared before an assistant commissioner on behalf of a peasant but the official fled the court to avoid hearing the case, which showed how useless the tribunals were.

The tribunals should be headed by senior civil judges instead of revenue officers because they could not take up cases effectively and they often failed to get their decisions implemented.

Peasant leader Taju Bheel, Rasheeda Saand, Om Parkash advocate, Shaikh Nabi Bux Shad advocate, Zulfiqar Ali, Abdullah Khoso, a local activist Shujauddin Qureshi of PILER also spoke on the occasion.

Published in Dawn, September 1st, 2014