LAHORE, April 13: The Pakistan Workers Confederation and the Pakistan Wapda Hydroelectric Central Labour Union will hold a national labour conference here on April 16 to discuss ‘unprecedented price hike and anti-worker laws’.

The conference is being held on the 14th death anniversary of Bashir Ahmad Bakhtiar, a pioneer of the trade union movement and the first vice-president of the All-Pakistan Trade Unions Federation established in 1948 with Faiz Ahmad Faiz as its president and Mirza Ibrahim secretary-general.

The conference will be held at the Bakhtiar Labour Hall where eminent trade union leaders will speak on the current situation in the trade union movement. A workers rally will follow the conference.

Khurshid Ahmad said industrial workers were facing repressive situation owing to unprecedented price hike and anti-worker laws which had taken away their right to agitate their grievances in labour courts and other fora.

He said the Presidential Ordinance of 2000 which allowed the government to terminate the services of public servants without notice, the Industrial Relations Ordinance, 2002, the Punjab Industrial Policy, 2003, and the Banking Companies Ordinance were some of the laws which had hit hard on the workers rights.

Mr Ahmad said the amendments to various laws were in conflict with a number of conventions adopted by the International Labour Organisation to which Islamabad was a signatory.

He also opposed privatisation of Pakistan Steel Mills, the Oil and Gas Development Authority, the Karachi Port Trust and other profit-earning public undertakings.