ISLMABAD, April 30: As the May Day is being observed on Tuesday, President Asif Zardari said the government’s sincere efforts in improving the condition of the working class and protecting them from exploitation were not yet over.  

“Our efforts will continue till the time our workers secure their rightful place in the society and are fully protected through social, economic and political measures against all kinds of exploitation,” he said.

The President said the PPP derived its strength from the workers of Pakistan. “We firmly believe that it is the labour and working class which is the backbone of any society and all claims of development remain meaningless until this vulnerable class is emancipated and rehabilitated.”

The concept of agricultural, industrial and socio-economic development is incomplete without contribution of labourers, workers and farmers.

The global strides in industry and agriculture are owed to the hard work of labourers and farmers, he said.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, in his message, stated that the democratic government had made workers shareholders in the institutions for the first time in history and distributed official shares worth Rs100 billion among half a million workers. The steps such as nomination of workers in the board of directors of the institutions will further empower the working classes.

“We believe that the secret of any country’s development lies in the value of hard work and its human resources. A society, which does not address the basic needs of its working classes, remains backward.” Right from day one, the government has been committed to improving the standard of living of labourers and workers, and it has taken a number of steps for provision of basic amenities such as education, housing and health, he said.

Meanwhile, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) has said despite signs that economic growth had resumed in some regions, the global employment situation was alarming and showed no sign of recovery in the near future. Around 50 million jobs are still missing compared to the situation that existed before the crisis.  The ILO warned that a new and more problematic phase of the global jobs crisis was emerging.

It its “World of work report 2012: better jobs for a better economy”, the ILO regretted that the alarming job situation was due to the fact that many governments, especially in advanced economies, had shifted their priority to a combination of fiscal austerity and tough labour market reforms.

Such measures are having devastating consequences on labour markets in general and job creation in particular. They have also mostly failed to reduce fiscal deficits.

Projections indicate that, on present trends, employment in advanced economies will not reach pre-crisis levels until late 2016.

The current economic slowdown has also affected employment prospects in emerging and developing economies.

It said global employment had not yet recovered from the crisis that erupted in 2008.

The global employment rate, at 60.3 per cent in 2011, is 0.9 percentage points lower than before the crisis. This means that around 50 million jobs are missing relative to the pre-crisis situation.