‘Freedom comes with improved quality of life’

Banning unions at factories with less than 50 workers criticised.

LAHORE:

“What sovereignty has Pakistan lost by the United States intruding into its territory and killing Osama bin Laden when it is already heavily indebted to it and follows policies of its liking?” asked Lawyer Abid Hasan Minto on Sunday.

He was speaking at a public gathering organised by the Workers Party Pakistan at the Lahore Press Club to discuss the current political and economic crises. Minto, who is the president of the Workers Party, said bin Laden’s life or death was not a concern for millions of peasants, labourers and others living in extreme conditions in the country. He said independence could not be associated only with control over geographical area. The people, he said, would be truly independent when they gained access to quality food, healthcare and education facilities and could hold national institutions, especially the military, accountable.

In this regard, he said, Pakistanis should take inspiration from the governments of Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales who had repossessed Venezuela and Bolivia’s resources and were using the revenues for the welfare of their people. He said the military had time and again failed to perform its primary duty of guaranteeing security.

Earlier, Akhter Hussain of the Workers Party said military’s involvement in politics should be understood as an attempt to protect its commercial interests. He said that as well as removing itself from politics, the military should also give up ownership of businesses and land.

WPP’s Safdar Husaain Sindhu criticised the Punjab Industrial Relations Act of 2010, saying that the law proscribed trade unions at industrial units with less than 50 workers.

He said factory owners only showed 20 or 30 workers as regular employees and the rest as contractual workers to prevent them from forming unions. He said no other province had imposed such a restriction.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 9^th, 2011.