LAHORE: The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) and Joint Action Committee for People’s Rights (JAC) urged the government to take immediate action to provide relief to the millions of citizens grappling with the spiraling cost of living.

Speakers deplored the tacit alliance between the businesses, agricultural and industrial elite with state establishment, which, they said, skewed the distribution of wealth and produced a consumption-heavy economy, leaving millions of people struggling to make ends meet.

A public meeting was held at the HRCP Garden Town office on Thursday. Among the participants were JAC convener Irfan Mufti, HRCP secretary general Harris Khalique, rights activist Mohamad Tahseen, academics Fahd Ali and Salima Hashmi, labour rights activists Latif Ansari, Farooq Tariq and Rubina Shakil, Human Rights Watch representative Saroop Ijaz, and student rights activists Ali Raza and Muzammil Kakar.

The participants passed a resolution calling for price control to be imposed on essential goods such as staple food, fuel and essential medicines.

According to the resolution, working-class households should also be given subsidised access to electricity, gas, potable water connectivity and public transportation. While a living wage should eventually be instituted to ensure that all households enjoy a reasonable standard of living, in the short term, the minimum wage must be raised in direct proportion to the rate of inflation.

Immediate action must also be taken to ensure fair and equitable wages for women working in the informal sector. Existing social safety net programmes must be scaled up to ensure that vulnerable households do not fall below the poverty line. The right to pensions, healthcare benefits and unemployment benefits should be available to all. The annual budgets for education and health should be increased to at least four to six percent of the GDP to allow the government to provide free universal primary education, free school meals, affordable secondary and higher education and a free national health service.

According to further demands in the resolution, the state must focus on creating employment opportunities, especially for those displaced by conflict or climate change. It must ensure that workers are not treated as disposable commodities and protect the right to safe and secure working conditions for all. ‘Austerity’ measures such as regressive taxation in the form of indirect taxes must be countered and replaced with progressive taxation.

The federal government must also disclose the status and terms of repayment of loans acquired from multilateral bodies and make a strong case for debt retirement and reparations through a comprehensive debt audit. The real estate sector must be regulated through progressive taxation to restrict the hoarding of land and natural resources, while agricultural land should be protected from elite-led housing schemes.

Concluding the meeting, HRCP treasurer Husain Naqi said civil society must launch a mass movement to demand that political parties put the interests of the working classes ahead of those of the establishment.

Published in Dawn, August 23rd, 2024