LAHORE, April 30: The provincial government is yet to frame bylaws and rules for the operation of the Punjab Industrial Policy enforced in 2003 as a result of which the owners of industrial units are allegedly committing illegalities.

Lack of enforcement of an eight-hour working day, non-payment of the minimum wages and overtime, ignoring shifts, and indifference to the needs of workers especially healthcare and transport facilities are the common ills.

Similarly, the labour secretariat has not so far issued a notification of the fixing of the minimum wages at Rs4,000 a month, though a raise was announced by the federal government on July 1 last year. Consequently, most of the industries are paying much less to their workers in wages as well as overtime.

The Punjab Industrial Policy is not the only example as the Industrial Relations Ordinance 2002, too, has its contribution to add to the plight of the working class which is made to suffer at the hands of the owners of small and big industrial units.

The millers have so far shown little or no respect for the laws regulating the working hours, overtime, transport and healthcare for the millhand, both men and women, who are forced to work beyond the stipulated period more or less without adequate wages.

Working Women Organisation leader Rubina Jameel said the government had shown indifference to the plight of the industrial workers for a balanced operation of the industrial policy within the meaning of the rights and obligation of both the management and the workers. It was also still to issue a notification a year after the federal government fixed the minimum wages at Rs4,000 a month, she said while talking to Dawn.

The labour department also seems to have lost its efficacy particularly after an amendment to the Factories Act of 1934 to abolish the system of inspection by labour inspectors. The abolition of the inspection system is a major ingredient of the labour policy as a ‘revolutionary decision’ to remove irritants of the business community. As a result, labour inspectors or for that matter other officials have more or less no work to do.

The inspection system has been replaced by a system of self-declaration in which the labour department will randomly select five per cent of the units for the purpose every year. This inspection has been made conditional. The new provision says the inspection of an industrial unit cannot be done without the coordination of the district human resource boards which are primarily represented by the private sector.

Lahore, according to the labour department, has 1,289 (big and small) industrial units. Most of them are producing garments, leather and denim products, shoes, electric and electronic appliances, juices and food items, and are engaged in pharmaceuticals. The number of industrial workers employed in the units at present is 95,388 and about 22,000 of them are women whose majority is employed by garments units.

Most of the industrial units, according to Pakistan Workers Confederation provincial president Gulzar Chaudhry, do not offer the workers regular jobs and an overwhelming majority of them is employed on a contract whose conditions vary from factory to factory.

None of these units pay the minimum wages of Rs4,000 to their workers whose monthly wages invariably ranges between Rs2,000 and Rs3,500. “By all standards, this payment is a big illegality which the federal and Punjab governments are yet to take notice of.

“This is how the workers are observing the May Day to commemorate the great struggle of the workers of Chicago for an eight-hour working day for which they offered their blood”, says Gulzar Chaudhry, who adds that the labour laws have become more anti-worker and the workforce has been placed at the mercy of mill owners who are exploiting them.

Another illegality, he says, relates to working hours. The Factories Act provides that workers are required to work in shifts of eight hours each and any work beyond the stipulated time will be charged as overtime for which the compensation will be double than the normal working hours. But what actually is happening is that no industrial unit has introduced three shifts and the managements are making their workers work in two shifts a day, expanding over 12 and in some cases 14 hours. They are not paid overtime according to the law as most of the factories pay the workers overtime as normal hours. Nowhere is double overtime being paid.

Women workers, according to WWO’s Aima Mahmood, have also to work for at least 12 hours a day without the legal facility of double overtime. The law also provides for pick and drop facilities to women workers, but such a facility is more or less absent in most of the factories.

The WWO leaders say a majority of women workers are engaged in the garments industry and most of the time they have to perform the duty standing on sewing machines. They face health problems in a situation where healthcare is not available.

The 2003 Punjab Industrial Policy also amended the social security law by replacing the provision of essential health cover for workers by a system in which the industries will have to pay a fixed amount as annual social security subscription depending on the workers employed. The new slab system makes an industry, having up to 10 employees, pay an annual subscription of Rs10,000. Those employing up to 20 people will have to pay Rs25,000 and Rs50,000 for a staff of 50.

Except for this subscription, the industrialist is not obliged to spend any money on the workers’ health and the miller is not required to take care of the worker falling prey to an occupational hazard.