HYDERABAD, June 10 Adviser to Sindh Chief Minister Ms Sharmila Farooqui said on Thursday that big industrialists were main hurdles to the government's efforts to protect basic rights of workers and provide them social security.
Speaking at a seminar on “Awareness session with labour department and other stakeholders regarding registration of workers of brick kilns in labour and social security departments” here the adviser said that the government had raised minimum wages to Rs7,000 but many industrialists who had amassed huge money from the hard labour of workers were not willing to pay them that amount.
She said that the government had now decided to issue notices to the industrialists found in violation of relevant laws and conduct raids on their factories.
She called for carrying out national survey and establishing separate courts for bonded labour to provide easy and speedy justice to the victims of bonded labour and help eliminate this menace from society.
The seminar was organised by the Society for Protection of the Rights of the Child (Sparc) to create awareness about registration of brick kiln workers under a suo motu action taken by the apex court.
Ms Farooqui advised the government to form a committee comprising parliamentarians, government officers, opinion leaders and leaders of NGOs and civil society to revisit the Bonded Labour Act and Sindh Tenancy Act 1950 to make the laws more effective for checking violation of workers rights.
She recommended that crime of bonded labour should be made a non-bailable offence. The survey conducted 14 years ago in 1996 had revealed that 88 per cent children were also among 3.3 million people working as bonded labour, she said.
She accused the past governments of ignoring basic human rights and said the PPP government had planned to provide full legal as well as social protection to workers at their workplaces.
She claimed that as many as 560 brick kilns had been registered in the province by labour and social security departments. The departments had now been made responsible for protecting all rights of registered workers, including their salary, education, health and other social facilities, she said.
She, however, pointed out that many owners of brick kilns were giving daily wages at the rate of Rs300 instead of Rs450 to each worker, which was a serious violation of law.
She warned owners of the brick kilns to stop violation of law or face government action.
The government, she said, would not only encourage such organisations but would also rehabilitate the victims by providing them shelter, job, education and training in different trades to enable them to earn their livelihood.
The adviser expressed dissatisfaction over performance of vigilance committees on bonded labour and said more efforts were needed to make these committees effective.