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AT the time of writing, more than 30 labourers were reported dead due to the collapsing roof of an under-construction polythene-bag manufacturing unit in Lahore’s Sundar Industrial Area. Almost 100 are injured, and the chances of rescuing over 20 still trapped underneath the rubble are decisively slim.
Two months ago, Sept 4, the roof of a garments manufacturing unit located in the residential area of Nishter Colony caved in killing four, and injuring 18. Three years ago, a factory fire in a two-storey shoe-manufacturing unit (set up in a house) killed at least 30 workers. There was only one entry-exit point for the entire building. Earlier in the same year, a boiler blast in a pharmaceutical factory in Hassan Town killed 15, and injured at least 60 others. Of those killed, seven were women, and four were children.
That’s almost 100 workers killed in accidents during the last three years in the provincial capital. This list is not exhaustive. It’s what a quick Google search throws up on the first few pages.
There are few, if any, diligent labour inspectors carrying out their work in Lahore, let alone in other cities.
The reason why I’ve focused on incidents only in Lahore is because this is a city that commands the greatest amount of political and economic attention from the Punjab government. It has the greatest amount of resources thrown at it, it is frequently referred to as the economic and cultural heart of the province and is flaunted as a shining beacon of good governance, proactive administration, and efficient service delivery. Its track record of guaranteeing workplace safety and rights for the poorest strata of workers, however, is pathetic.
This is not due to a lack of legislation or frameworks. Pakistan has ratified 33 out of 35 ILO conventions on various aspects of worker rights. Chapter III of the Factories Act 1934 provides a comprehensive strategy for combating all kinds of industrial hazards. It also forbids the employment of children under 14 in any kind of factory. Relevant sections of the Punjab Factories Rules 1978 lists procedures required to minimise workplace accidents. Building codes and by-laws enshrined in industrial acts and construction regulation frameworks provide detailed guidelines for commercial and industrial building safety. The provincial government has a Labour and Human Resource Department, and several laws — such as the Factories Act, and Shops and Establishments Ordinance — which allow for factory inspections.
And yet despite all the tons of paper wasted publishing these conventions, and legislative effort put in the past 100 years, working conditions for low-income labourers are nothing less than terrible. The crisis, therefore, is not one of legal lacunae, or at least of law per se. The crisis is structural, deeply rooted in the political-economy of this country.
To understand this better, imagine a world with two actors and a neutral umpire. Both are trying to influence the umpire to give decisions in their favour. One has greater resources, is more well connected, better organised, and is thus able to buy off the umpire. At some point down the line, that more powerful actor is so dominant it’s hard to distinguish him from the umpire.
This is what has happened not just in Punjab but also across the country. With no unions, no political party relevant enough to take up their cause, and no important social networks to tap into, industrial and service-sector workers find themselves at the bottom of this country’s social and political food-chain. Just like the 30 who’ve died in Lahore, more than 90pc of this toiling mass is employed informally, on verbal contracts, with no recourse to the 180 days of injury pay, or health and social security insurance guaranteed by government legislation.
At the other end, businessmen eke out greater profits by continuously keeping labour costs low, paying out less than half the minimum wage as daily rates, ignoring health and safety guidelines, and undertaking illegal construction on already unstable structures. This is currently being marketed as our great gift and enormous potential to manufacturers based in China. All of it will be guaranteed by a pliant state machinery, bought off where necessary, or kept starved by a business-state nexus where needed.
In the last fiscal year, the Labour and Human Resource department of Punjab was allocated a budget of Rs539 million. The figure was later revised downwards to Rs113.6m — a sum that the government normally spends on uprooting and reconstructing neighbourhood roads three times a week.
Given the proximity between all mainstream parties in Punjab and the business elite who fund them and function as candidates for them, it also comes as little surprise that under the aegis of a now-revolutionary sugar industrialist, who served as advisor to the chief minister and subsequently as federal minister for industries, labour inspections were done away with completely in the 2003 Industrial Policy. They were called “archaic and cumbersome”, and the “self-declaration” system introduced in their stead was heralded as “modern”.
Ten years later, the Supreme Court intervened and had inspections restored, but the governance structure to carry them out has suffered irreversibly. There are few, if any, diligent labour inspectors carrying out their work in Lahore, let alone in other cities. Most are on retainers of businessmen both large and small, just like the rest of the state structure.
Shahbaz Sharif rushed to Sundar Estate when the accident happened, and announced compensation packages for those who perished or sustained injuries. He rushed back as quickly and is now probably giving his attention to some grand development scheme for the city. A paltry 100 union workers protesting at the Press Club are not enough to pressurise anyone into giving sustained attention to a wholly avoidable factory accident. Rest assured, things will continue as before even after the next accident happens.
The writer teaches politics at Lums.
Twitter: @umairjav
Published in Dawn, November 9th, 2015
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