KARACHI, June 9: Trade unionists, labour leaders and human rights activists on Saturday paid homage to those who laid down their lives during  the 1972 labour movement and tribute to all those who took part in the struggle for the cause of workers’ rights.

Sindh Labour Minister Ameer Nawab, who was also a labour leader at that time, was the chief guest at the event that included the groundbreaking of a memorial raised in the Frontier Colony graveyard for the six workers who laid down their lives when police opened fire on a labour rally held in the SITE area as part of the movement in 1972.

The Saturday event was organised the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (Piler) and the Shaheed Mazdoor Yadgaar Committee at Frontier Colony No.3.

Karamat Ali of Piler, Baba Ghiasuddin, Faizullah Khan, Afzal Khan, Mohammad Khan, Syed Momin and other labour leaders were among those who spoke at the ceremony.

They recalled that the workers had launched a peaceful movement in June 1972 against retrenchments and exploitation of workers by employers as well as anti-workers policies of the then government. They said that under a conspiracy, a labour leader spearheading the movement in the SITE industrial area of Karachi, Mr Shoaib, who belonged to the Muttahida Mazdoor Federation, was killed on June 7, 1972 a day before a protest rally organised by the alliance. However, they said, the rally was held and the police resorted to firing at the participants killing five of them.

Paying homage to the martyrs and eulogising the other rally participants’ zeal and contribution towards the just struggle for fellow workers’ rights, the labour minister underlined the need for setting up a strong labour organisation which could effectively assert the genuine rights of workers. He said the present government had amended the labour laws enacted during the martial law regimes in workers’ favour. In this regard, he also referred to the lifting of a longstanding ban on trade unionism.

He deplored that dictatorships always suppressed workers, and said that labour movement could flourish only in a democratic dispensation.

Karamat Ali condemned police firing on the peaceful participants of the 1972 labour rally and said that labour movement should continue and that workers should get inspiration from the sacrifices offered by workers in the past.

He observed that workers today were faced with a situation worse than it was in 1972. He regretted that only two-three per cent workers of the country were today organised under trade unions as compared to the position of 40 years ago. Baba Ghiasuddin told the audience that government and employers together were usurping workers’ rights. He eulogised workers’ zest in the 1972 labour movement, and said it was a joint struggle by workers of all sectors for their legitimate rights.

Most speakers stressed the need for a similar struggle in order to forcefully advocate workers’ due rights and make the government resolve their genuine grievances.—PPI