HYDERABAD, Nov 18: A labour conference has rejected the Industrial Relations Ordinance 2002 and the Presidential Ordinance 2000 about compulsory retirement. It has demanded that the two ordinances should be repealed as they were in flagrant violation of ILO conventions and fundamental human rights.

The conference was organised by the Pakistan Workers Federation in collaboration with the Pakistan Wapda Hydro-Electric Central Labour Union on Friday.

It lasted for several hours and was attended by a large number of labour union leaders and workers from all districts of interior Sindh.

The conference demanded that the right to form trade unions by employees of all departments and organisations except army and police should be restored as was the practice in vogue before independence.

The central general secretary of the federation, Khursheed Ahmed, said that the government was bent upon privatisation of all profitable enterprises including Wapda.

He said that the workers would resist such moves.

He said that the capitalists had retrenched thousands of workers from factories and mills and introduced the contract system which was unacceptable.

He said that workers were being forced to work for 12 hours instead of eight hours and warned that if this practice was not stopped, the workers had every right to protest.

He called upon the government to reactivate closed powerhouses and factories to eliminate unemployment and unrest among the workers.

He demanded that the privatisation of national enterprises should be stopped immediately.

The regional secretary of the federation, Mr Latif Nizamani, said that appointments in the country in different departments and organisations were being made on the political basis, but the doors of employment had been closed on children of employees.Mr Nizamani said that 2,000 posts were lying vacant in Hesco but the children of employees were denied employment.

He said that this was creating unrest among the Hesco employees.

He urged the workers to launch a joint struggle for their legal rights and demanded that the workers should be given representation on boards of directors of all companies.

Iqbal Qaimkhani, Mir Khan Baloch, Malik Sultan Khan, Qazi Saleem Anwar and Mehboob Qureshi spoke on the occasion.

The conference adopted many resolutions demanding the strict implementation of labour laws.

It pointed out that in the country, 70 per cent employees had not been given appointment letters, as a result, they were deprived of gratuity, pension, bonus, health cover and other facilities guaranteed under the labour laws.

The conference criticised the contract system and demanded that all labour laws should be made applicable to contract employees.

It assailed the retrenchment of workers on the pretext of downsising and rightsizing and claimed that 400,000 workers had been rendered jobless during the last five years on these pretexts.

It held the Jagirdari system responsible for illiteracy and dictatorship and demanded the introduction of land reforms fixing the land holding limit of 25 acres in the canal fed areas and 50 acres in the barani areas.

It opposed the construction of Kalabagh dam, being detrimental to national unity.

It condemned bonded labour and child labour practices and demanded that child labour should be banned, the poor families should be given subsistence allowance and their children should be provided free education at least upto primary level.

It called upon the government to drastically reduce non-development expenditure as foreign loans were eating into the very marrow of country's economy.