BONDED labour, child labour and other under-paid workers delivered to the mills by labour contractors — you name them, there are plenty of them.

Despite the prolong agitation against the practice of bonded labour, the system continues in the interior of Sindh, and particularly in brick kilns.

The kiln owners starve labourers to break their resistance, and their wages are set to be adjusted against unpaid or vastly inflated loans.

News has come from Jamshoro that a brick kiln owner near Tando Haider had kept 85 bonded workers in his private jails since long. They were made to work as long as 18 hours a day and they were kept in custody for loans which they have alleged to have taken but deny having got them.

The bonded labour has created an image problem for Pakistan in foreign lands. AFL–CIO officials say: “We will not let you manufacture goods employing bonded labour, child labour or cheap prison labour and export such goods to the US and make our workers unemployed.”

The government needs to check such gross abuse of labour and concede their basic rights. While the government is agreeable to such labour reforms, and some legislation has been passed, the desired changes have not come in actual practice.

The living condition of the workers, save some groups of organized workers are very poor, particularly of those working in the informal sector.

The large population and abundant labour supply depresses wages and keeps them poor even when they are employed. And the rising inflation makes the plight of the poor workers far worse.

If in such a situation, the government says the rate of employment is only seven per cent, would you believe that? It is a better figure than the two per cent unemployment the government documents show in the early 1980’s.

The figure became unrealistic after the late Dr Mehbub-ul-Haq as minister for planning and finance asserted the rate of unemployment was at least 14 per cent. But after his demise the figure slided back and now the rate of unemployment stands at seven percent after under one per cent improvement from last year.

If the rate of unemployment is seven per cent now,Pakistan is better than many European states as Germany has an unemployment rate of 11.3 per cent, Belgium 12.9, France 9.6, and Spain 8.5 per cent and the euro region as a whole 8.4 per cent.

Evidently, those who conducted the labour survey have done it in a shoddy manner, without caring for the ground reality, particularly in the rural areas where 60 per cent of the people live. Such figures have been repeated year after year showing a marginal improvement.

Similarly, the literacy rate has been shown (following the survey) at 52.4 per cent up from 51.1 per cent. What matters is not the nominal literacy which the survey mentions but the effective or functional literacy which may not be more than 30 per cent.

How can the rate of unemployment be so low when under 30 per cent of the people are reported to be working with half of the population under 15 years and the bulk of the women are not engaged in regular work outside their homes.

In the distant past, employment exchanges, showed the number of people employed through such exchanges. Out of 10 persons who registered themselves with such exchanges barely one got a job. The government found the figures were unfavourable to it and so did away with these exchanges.

And now you need a Sifarish or a larger bribe to get a job. Such impersonal exchanges do very little to help the unemployed to get jobs.

For long, now the donors particularly the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank have been voicing their dissatisfaction with the officials statistics and calling for radical improvement. As a result, the government is setting up the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics in place of the old bureau under the Statistical Division.

The PBS will absorb the agricultural census organization, the population census organization as well as the old bureau of statistics. The PBS will have will have a economic statistics, census, survey, resource management and support services divisions.

Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz has approved the PBS. It will be an independent and autonomous organization. Production of reliable, authentic, timely and transparent statistical data compatible with the needs of the economy and socio-economic development is a requirement of the nation.

The establishment of the PBS would insure collection and release of independent and accurate statistical data will ensure transparency and facilitate sound decision-making, Shaukat Aziz said.

The PBS will be run by highly qualified professionals and will formulate the parameters of collecting official statistics, plan, and co-ordinate and prepare annual survey programmes of survey in Pakistan.

It will also plan and execute all national census and major surveys, co-ordinate with international bodies and committees in statistical matters and will provide standard concepts, definitions and classifications pertaining to official statistics.

A great deal of change and improvements in the collection and presentation was promised in the past as well but little changes came through in reality. Accurate, reliable and transparent statistics are needed for timely preparation of the budget and other major policies.

What is important is that the statistics are not tailored to meet the political demands of the government or improve the image of the government as had happened in the past. And the statistics should not be disappointing and the inflation figures should reflect the ground reality.