Hundreds of labourers, including women, gathered outside a garment factory in the eastern district of Karachi to protest against their forced layoff a week before the International Labour Day, Anadolu Agency reports.

They, in fact, came to receive their salaries but they were verbally informed that the factory no longer required their services due to the financial losses caused by a lingering lockdown imposed by the government to curb the raging coronavirus outbreak.

"It's happening in all over Pakistan [nowadays]. Labourers, especially daily wagers, and contract employees are being laid off without any notice," said Shams-ur-Rehman Swati, president of National Labuor Federation (NLF), a conglomerate of different labour unions in Pakistan.

"Every day, hundreds of labourers are being laid off across the country since the government imposed the lockdown last month," Swati told Anadolu Agency.

Read more here.