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HYDERABAD, Aug 17: The provincial general secretary, All Pakistan Trade Unions Organization, Mehboob Ali Qureshi, has accused the industrialists of violating labour laws and depriving the workers of their legal rights.
In a statement issued here on Sunday, he said that the poor workers were not being given appointment letters as a result of which they had been deprived of medical facilities and pension.
He said that not only this but the workers were not being given the minimum wage of Rs2,500 per month as was announced by the government, especially in the biscuit factories where they were being paid only Rs1,600 to Rs1,800 per month.
He said this was a flagrant violation of labour laws, which had created unrest among the workers.
He severely criticized the new Industrial Relations Ordinance 2002 saying that it had been promulgated without taking the labour leaders into confidence.
He said under this ordinance, the labour courts had been shorn of their powers to reinstate the dismissed workers.
He said this ordinance had added to the miseries of the workers and this was the reason that it had been rejected by all the labour unions and their federations.
He pointed out that the prices of consumer goods had increased manifold but the government had not increased the wages of the workers although it has increased the salaries of its own employees by 15 per cent.
He demanded that the mill owners should be directed to implement the labour laws, IRO 2002 should be repealed, and the salaries of the workers should be increased by at least Rs1,000 per month.
HYDRO UNION: The central secretary general, Pakistan Wapda Hydro Electric Central Labour Union, Khursheed Ahmed, has said that the union would see to it that the services of contractual employees were not terminated by Wapda.
He was speaking to the contractual employees of the Hyderabad Electric Supply Company, working at Mirpurkhas, Tando Allahyar, Tando Adam, Hyderabad and Tando Mohammad Khan, at the Wapda Labour Hall here on Sunday.
He said a contractual employee had to work under perpetual tension and it was, therefore, necessary to provide him security of service.
He said due to the efforts of the union, the services of contractual employees who had completed three years of service had been regularized.
Speaking on the occasion, the president of the union, Abdul Latif Nizamani, said that when Wapda came into existence all the employees were hired on a daily-wage basis but things had changed now.
The provincial secretary of the union, Mohammad Iqbal Kaim Khani, in his speech, demanded that the services of all contractual employees who had completed one year of service and daily wage employees who had been working in this capacity for 10 years should be regularized.
He further demanded that the services of the work charge employees who had been working for six to eight years should also be regularized and the employment quota for the children of the employees should be restored.
