Sindh and Punjab have taken the same stand on the issue of the Employees' Old-Age Benefits Institution's (EOBI) and Workers Welfare Funds (WWF) assets, said Sindh Labour Minister Saeed Ghani on Wednesday.
Addressing a press conference, Ghani further stated that given the pandemic situation, it seemed unlikely that schools would reopen in January.
Retaliating to special assistant to the prime minister on overseas Pakistanis and human resource development Zulfi Bukhari's comments, which he gave after the provincial labour minister accused the Centre of 'unlawfully' seizing the EOBI and Workers Welfare Fund, Ghani reiterated that the Council of Common Interest (CCI) was not authorised to overturn a provincial law.
"It is a constitutional body, but the Constitution [of Pakistan] explains how it is to work and the CCI cannot overrule a court order," he remarked.
Ghani's stance on the matter is in connection with the Sindh government's position taken earlier this year, when the matter of transferring EOBI's administrative control of the EOBI to the Centre was referred to the CCI for deliberation.
Referring to Bukhari's reply to his earlier statement, Ghani said the former has said that when the Pakistan Peoples Party was in the government in the Centre, it had delegated the Workers Welfare Fund to the Ministry of Inter Provincial Coordination.
"But I have a letter written by [the] then Sindh chief minister, Syed Qaim Ali Shah, to Yousuf Raza Gilani, who was the prime minister at the time," he said. "The letter requested that assets of the labour department's institutions be distributed among the provinces." Later, in 2016, a letter from the office of the special assistant to the PM on revenue urged the federal government to get a stay from a court over the Sindh government's move aimed at the distribution of the EOBI's and Workers Welfare Fund's assets, he went on.
"While no court issued a stay on the law passed by the provincial government on the matter, the Ministry of Law was of the view that the provinces may legislate on the issue but not claim the assets of the two institutions," said Ghani.
Bukhari has leveled allegations against the Sindh government in this connection, but the Punjab labour department too wrote a letter this month, seeking the advice of the Ministry of Law on the Federal Board of Revenue - the body making EOBI collections on the Centre's behalf - sending letters to different institutions on the matter, said Ghani. He added that the Ministry of Law had been of the view that since the Punjab government had framed a law on the matter, the Workers Welfare Fund was no longer applicable in the province.
The Punjab labour secretary also wrote a letter to the federal secretary, raising the same issue, he said.
"Sindh and Punjab have the same stance on the matter, yet they [the Centre] level accusations [only] against the former," he commented.
Contesting Bukhari's claim of Sindh chief minister having acceded to handing over the control of the EOBI and Workers Welfare Fund to the Centre, he said that the CM had been raising the issue in the CCI meetings, where he maintained that his government had legislated on the matter and the control of the two institutions be handed over to the province.
"We hold firm that the assets of the EOBI and Workers Welfare Fund should be distributed," added Ghani, saying that the Punjab government had called for the same in a plea filed in the Supreme Court.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 24th, 2020.
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