KARACHI, Dec 14: During the three-day meeting of the Pakistan-India People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy, (PIPFPD), the sectoral meetings expressed concern over the changes in labour laws detrimental to workers to facilitate the multinational corporations.

It was noted that the policy of golden handshake had rendered a large number of workers in the organized sector redundant and labour laws were being amended to attract foreign direct investment.

The sectoral group on labour, comprising representatives from both India and Pakistan, met at the PILER office and expressed concern over the low representation of workers at the convention. The meeting was jointly chaired by Karamat Ali, director PILER, and Mahendra Sharma from ITF, India.

The meeting resolved to ask the PIPFPD secretariats in India and Pakistan to approach trade unions at national and local levels to involve workers’ organisations in the struggle for peace, friendship and democracy. It was decided to exchange information on working conditions in the organized and unorganized informal sectors in both the countries.

The meeting held that workers’ rights were under attack in both the countries by economic liberalisation and privatisation policies pursued by the governments, under pressure from the World Bank, IMF and the Asian Development Bank.

It was felt that the participation fee for the convention was too high and workers could not afford it. Prof Khawaja Wasim, chairperson NWFP - chapter of the PIPFDP, assured that he would take up the matter for reducing the fee and efforts would be made to involve the working classes of both the countries in the struggle.

The meeting felt there should be regular meetings of representatives of business sector workers to exchange information and evolve common strategies as the policies of managements were similar.

The group welcomed the Karachi declaration of the South Asian Labour for Peace Conference held in Karachi in September 2003, and decided that all those trade union centres which did not attend the convention would be contacted to join the movement. Complete support was declared for the peace march from Karachi to Delhi being organized by Dr Sandeep Panoby.

A sectoral meeting, of the People’s Movement, held at the Jinnah Medical College, discussed the impact of mega projects including dams and highways in India and Pakistan.

The participants were of the view that such projects had resulted in displacement and forced, massive eviction of local communities, and in degradation of environment and ecology.

They stressed that India and Pakistan, instead of suppressing the people’s movements against Kalabagh Dam, the Thal Canal, the Lyari Expressway,the Narmada Dam, the Tehri dam etc, should discuss the issues with the representatives of those movements, and work on such projects should be stopped forthwith.

Another group, which met under the aegis of Pen for Peace, demanded that restriction on free exchange and distribution of books, journals, magazines and newspapers should be removed.

It also demanded that prices of books, magazines and newspapers be reduced, to make them accessible for the reading public, and the high rate of postage be reduced to the benefit of book trade and readers at large.

It was decided that a chapter of Pen for Peace by the writers, intellectuals and academics of India should be launched to build continuous links. It was proposed that a bilingual conference at Idarae Anwarul Aloom Hyderabad (Andhra Pradesh) be held by writers of different languages to pursue the cause of peace.