KARACHI: The Sindh Assembly was informed on Wednesday that there was no mechanism for monitoring salaries being given to domestic women workers, but the provincial government was working on legislation on the issue.

This was stated by Minister for Labour and Human Resources Ghulam Murtaza Baloch during Question Hour that was marred by discord when the treasury and opposition members exchanged heated arguments as they seemed unsatisfied with the minister’s replies.

The situation took an ugly turn when Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf MPA Khurram Sher Zaman repeatedly asked what would be the criteria of the government for recruitment in the provincial departments.

The labour minister, however, tried to convince the opposition lawmaker, saying that the jobs would be given on merit under the provincial laws.

“Firstly, the jobs will be advertised in newspapers followed by interviews of the applicants as well as other procedures of the government would also be carried out,” Mr Baloch added, but the opposition members, particularly of the PTI, did not seem pleased.

Several PPP MPAs, including Kulsoom Chandio and Heer Soho, criticised the opposition alleging that they asked irrelevant questions and wasted the house’s valuable time.

Replying to a question, he said that the Sindh Employees Social Security Institution (Sessi) had registered 635,970 workers up to September 30 last year.

Responding to a query, the minister said that an amount of Rs2,000 million was invested in the Sindh Bank at a rate of 7.93 per cent after approval from Sessi’s investment committee, headed by the commissioner and comprising two members of governing body. He said that Rs400m was invested in the Muslim Commercial Bank at a rate of 7.5pc. “Total profits received on investment from Jan 2018 to Oct 2018 is Rs45.77m and Rs48.736m from the two banks respectively,” he added.

Replying to a question, the minister said that different training programmes were conducted by the labour director, Workers Welfare Board, Sessi, National Instit­ute of Labour Administration Training (NILAT) to enhance the capacity, skills and knowledge of employees.

He said that the Interna­tional Labour Organisation (ILO) had provided training to 120 officers of directorate of labour and NILAT had conducted 25,918 training courses/programmes for employers, workers and officers of the directorate of labour.

Besides, he said, as many as 39 training programmes were conducted by Sessi for medical officers, paramedics and administrative officers of the labour department.

He said that Workers Welfare Board provided training to 1,538 teachers of Workers Model Schools.

Replying to another question, the minister said that no contractual employees were regularised during the period from 2013 to 2018.

He further said that no fresh appointments were made in the labour department since 2012 due to a ban on recruitment.

The minister said that the recruitment process would be initiated under the existing provincial laws.

Replying to another question, he said it was the priority of the provincial government to eradicate corruption and ensure good governance, transparency, checks and balances and also provision of all medical facilities to workers.

Published in Dawn, January 24th, 2019