Constitutional amendment proposed: Bill tabled for reserving labourers’ seats

Rabbani warns govt against privatisation of PSM and PIA.

ISLAMABAD:

A senior leader of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) has introduced a bill in the upper house to reserve four special seats for labourers in the National Assembly.

Senator Raza Rabbani’s move is in consonance with his party’s promise of giving labourers direct representation in the country’s parliament.

Rabbani, who authored the historic 18th Constitutional Amendment, has proposed a new constitutional amendment for Article 51 and 106 of the Constitution, together with his colleague Senator Saeed Ghani. The bill seeks four reserved seats for labourers in the National Assembly that will be equally distributed among all four provinces and two in each of the provincial assemblies.

“Our party made this promise in its election manifesto. I appeal to other parties to support our bill as it gives representation to the country’s working class,” said Senator Rabbani while speaking to media men here on Tuesday. He added that Clause 4-A shall be added in Article 51 of the Constitution which would allocate reserved seats for labourers.

“The labour class is the backbone of our economy and they must have direct representation in the country’s parliament,” he said.

He said this was necessary because labour unions already had representation in local bodies at grass root level but had no one to raise their issues in the parliament.

Asked why his party did not move the bill while it was in power in the last government, Senator Rabbani said it was not on the party’s manifesto before 2013 general elections.

Against privatisation of key assets

Talking about Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM), Rabbani used strong words to caution the government against privatising the ‘national asset’. He said the PPP will strongly oppose any such move both in and outside parliament.

“I would advise you to drop the idea if anyone is thinking of handing over the two most important assets, the Pakistan Steel Mills and Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), to their crony capitalists,” said Senator Rabbani.

He said his party if needed would come out on streets to protest any move to privatise PSM and added that misconceptions were being manipulated to prepare grounds for its privatisation.

He said the previous PPP government did not make new recruitments in PSM during its last tenure.

“All those employees who were regularised during our government were already working there and were regularised in line with the law,” he said.

He clarified that his party’s government did not give any direct bailout package to the PSM for its resurrection.

“Only commercial loans were given to help it out of financial crisis,” he said, while demanding the government to release the Rs11 billion bailout package approved by the caretaker government for PSM.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 28th, 2013.