The present-day trade unions are either puppets in the hands of high-ups or pursue personal gains
LARKANA: While rallies and seminars were being organised in air-conditioned halls across the country for the Labour Day celebrations, some coal miners were busy with their routine taxing jobs, engulfed by flames in the Lakhra coal field in Hyderabad that suddenly caught fire taking the life of one of them and leaving two others injured. The victims were working because they could not afford to take the day off.
Child labour and filicide occur because of poverty. Recently, a poverty-stricken labourer from Layyah in utter despair, decided to poison five of his children and himself to death because he could no longer feed them. Such casualties symbolise general penury of common people throughout the country.
Electoral promises of pro-poor polices and welfare of the labourers and the economically disadvantaged is nothing but cajolery. Labour laws exist only on paper. The third party contract system of contractual employment is a new form of slavery active in the industrial units. Neither regularisation nor required incentives are given. Even safety measures are not maintained.
The trade unions with leftist politics have ceased to exist. The present-day trade unions are either puppets in the hands of high-ups or pursue personal gains. Whereas the agricultural workers are in double bondage, overworked and snared in vicious circle of debt that takes away their hard earned yearly share of crops. Justice demands labour laws to be implemented and pro-poor policies to be prioritised.
Nazeer Ahmed Arijo
Published in The Express Tribune, May 14th, 2017.
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