A cursory survey of the garrison city will reveal that in various workshops, the labourers work on daily wages earn a meager amount of Rs400 to Rs600.

This dismal situation can be observed in the markets of Chah Sultan, Railway Road, Gowalmandi, Pirwadhai and others.

“I earn Rs400 a day and manage to get work barely 10 days a month,” said Musa Khan, 27, a labourer. And it is his total source of income to fulfill the necessities of his five-member family on daily basis.

The salaried labourers are not much better off. Javed Ahmed, who works as a salesman at a Chemist’s shop, has said that his salary is just Rs4,000 a month and is stuck at this level by an exploitative owner who threatens to kick him out whenever he asks for a raise.

This is the state of affairs a year after the decentralisation of health, labour and environment departments under the 18th Amendment.

Labourers have to face exploitation and coercion due to the absence of proper check and balance mechanisms as labour laws remain a neglected area.

And even though minimum wages were set by the federal government at Rs7,000 last year, this has never been implemented and has not trickled down to the provinces. In Rawalpindi, the industrial workers continue working at terribly low salaries of Rs3,000 to Rs4,000 a month.

Take Naseer Khan, a labourer at a private factory, working 12-hour shifts for Rs4,000 a month. “The factory owners do not allow leaves and other benefits because I am a contractual employee,” he revealed.

Such labourers suffer either because they are unaware of labour laws or lack of implementation of these laws. In this situation, they are left in the lurch as they cannot demand much even if they know of their rights.

However, this remains rhetoric as ruling authorities keep increasing minimum wages and claim to improve labourers’ lot. This fiscal year, the federal government increased the salary of workers to Rs8,000 a month and the Punjab government increased it to Rs9,000 a month.

But there is no hope of seeing these figures come to life. The labour unions claimed that these announcements were no more than political statements as both governments failed to implement their decisions.

“The basic reason for non-implementation of labour laws is non-recognition of labourers who are working in shops, construction projects, brick kilns, mines, houses, workshops and others,” commented Asim Sajjad Akhter, a labour unionist and Chairman Railways Worker Union (Open Line).

He said that since there was no documentation of workers in the private sector, the government could not address their problems even if it wanted to. He highlighted that while the government could be pressurised into implementing its decisions related to organisations like Wapda, PTCL and Railways, other private industrialists hired the services of the workers on contract or daily wages which did not come under the ambit of legal documentation.

The People’s Labour Federation Vice President Babu Idrees argued that simply legislation or devolution was not enough to bring change until sincere efforts were made to make the bureaucratic processes smoother and more efficient.

“After devolution, the provincial bureaucracy became powerful enough to make its own policies, but it also needs to keep a vigilant eye on the working of all the sectors to know whether the people are getting the advantages of devolution or not,” he said.

Babu Idrees pointed out when the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), operating under the federal government, was paying a measly Rs3,000 to Rs4,000 a month to its labourers, how something better could be expected from the private sector.

Technically, labour inspectors have the responsibility to visit different industries to keep a check on the exploitation of the labourers in terms of salaries, working conditions and others. However, as can be expected, this rarely happens in an effective manner.

Furthermore, not all the rules are fair. The provincial government recently passed the Industrial Relations Act barring the labour inspectors from visiting any industry or factory without the permission of the owner.

According to Babu Idrees, this completely defies the point of spot checks when the employers have the option to allow for checking and time to get prepared for it.

“Earlier, it was not mandatory for the labour inspectors to get the permission of the owners as he would check the record and condition of labourers without permission,” he explained.

On the flip side, the employers maintain that labour laws are in fact being implemented. When contacted, Rawalpindi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (RCCI), former president Syed Ali Raza Saeed Shah expressed the opinion that industrialists and businessmen in the city were implementing all the labour laws.

He said that in his experience, labour inspectors visited factories and private enterprises frequently and checked the lists provided by the owners and whenever they made objections, the businessmen removed them.

When asked if the labour inspectors visited their enterprises without permission, he answered in negative, “No, according to the IRA, they are bound to get permission.”

And when asked about the daily wagers’ condition, he admitted that there were many labourers in the factories who had to work on low daily wages.

However, Assistant Director Labour, Malik Anwar, said that the provincial government was working to implement the labour laws. He said that his department had imposed fines on small and big enterprises for failure to implement the labour laws.