HYDERABAD, Nov 11: The Muttahida Labour Federation has criticized the government for banning trade unions in certain organizations and depriving the labour courts of the power to reinstate dismissed workers.

In a statement issued here on Monday, the secretary general of the MLF, Qamoos Gul Khatak, said that over the years the government had suggested during the talks with the MLF that it was not going to ban trade union activities.

According to him, the government had given the impression that except for the armed forces and the police department, trade union activities would not be banned in any organization and the agriculture workers would also be given the right to form trade unions.

Khatak said that the representatives of the employers too had not objected to trade union activities in any organization.

However, he deplored that under the new labour policy even workers of the Employees Old-age Benefits Institution and Workers Welfare Fund had not been allowed to form trade unions.

He said that to add insult to injury, the labour courts had been deprived of their authority to reinstate the dismissed workers.

He said that the National Industrial Relations Commission had also been restrained from issuing stay order to settle industrial disputes.

In this way the employer and the bureaucracy had been given a blank cheque to sack workers, he said.

The labour leader demanded that employees of the EOBI and the Workers Welfare Funds should be given the right to form unions and the authority of labour courts to reinstate the dismissed workers should be restored.