HYDERABAD: Rights activists and peasant leaders on Friday demanded an end to the practice of parceling out state land to army and corporate sector and urged the government to formulate a peasant-friendly policy to safeguard rights of undoubtedly the most downtrodden section of society.

Dr Ashuthama, Zahid Thebo and Hassan Sheikh of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan’s Special Task Force, Society for the Protection of Rights of Child and Bhandar Hari Sangat said at a rally that haris did not have any identity in the country although they tilled the land to feed entire nation.

The rally which started the march from the old campus chowk and terminated at the press club was organised to mark the international day of peasant struggle. Liberated peasants also took part in the rally.

The leaders said the peasants were not covered under any law, landowners considered them as chattel and did not give them adequate wages.

It was regrettable that the number of bonded labourers was on the increase in private jails, which showed failure of the institutions concerned, they said.

They expressed concern over reports that land mafia was eyeing the land on which the liberated haris’ camp had been established. The camp itself though faced shortage of water and its dwellers were always exposed to threats of displacement, they said.

They urged the government to introduce land reforms and distribute state land among the landless peasantry and demanded abolition of the policy under which government land was being parceled out to army and corporate sector.

They said the government should take practical steps to end forced labour and provide protection to women and religious minorities. A hari-friendly policy should be framed and peasants should be helped to market their agricultural products in order to attain economic peace, they said.

They said the land reforms had been reduced to mere jugglery of words because of presence of feudal lords in the parliament and policymaking organisations. As a result, even the agriculture sector, peasants and small farmers now faced shortage of food and different other commodities, they said.

They said that today Sindh was again in need of the kind of struggle waged by warrior saint Sufi Shah Inayat to resolve peasants’ problems.

Govt urged to safeguard workers’ rights

The office-bearers of the Sindh Sugar Mills Workers Federation said on Friday the provincial labour department should play an effective role in ensuring the factories paid minimum wages of Rs12,000 per month to their workers.

In a statement issued here they said the factory owners underpaid workers and gave them less than the minimum wages in stark violation of the law because most labourers were unaware of laws.

They said the Workers Welfare Board, Islamabad, had approved scholarship and death grants for workers on May 23, 2014, but the grants did not reach the deserving widows and workers’ children because the entire amount had been stomached by corrupt officers.

They demanded that the Sindh government take notice of the situation and the labour department management play its role in this regard. Only labourers were forced to follow the law while factory owners continued to violate it, they complained.

They said that deputy director of the Sindh Workers Welfare Board’s Hyderabad region often remained absent leaving workers to suffer. The government should direct the labour department to solve workers’ problems, they said.

Published in Dawn, April 18th, 2015

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