Labour leaders to march towards Lahore today

LQM said they had held several rounds of negotiations with factory owners regarding problems faced by workers

FAISALABAD:

Leaders of the Labour Qaumi Movement (LQM) have announced that they would march on to Lahore to press for their demands on Monday (today).

“We will besiege the Labour Department and demand that they address labourers’ problems,” LQM central president Baba Abdul Lateef Ansari told reporters on Sunday.

He said they had held several rounds of negotiations with factory owners regarding problems faced by workers. “Even the district administration assured us that they would cooperate with us. However, at the last meeting, with the owners of several factories and brick kilns in the district, on August 22, we met indifference and inflexibility on the issue of workers’ problems.”

He said after the last round of meetings failed, labour leaders had decided that holding a protest demonstration in the provincial capital was the only way to get their voices heard. “Our protest will go on until the Labour Department does something for the welfare of labourers.”

To a question, Ansari said that the government had raised wages of labourers, including brick kiln workers, across the province…However, most factory and brick kiln owners are not implementing the wages’ notification issued by the government…they are continuing, instead, to exploit the hard labour of poor workers.”

He said the LQM had been protesting peacefully against the highhandedness of factory owners but no one in the government had paid heed to their requests. “Instead, the Labour Department is hand-in-glove with the factory owners and owners of brick kilns. Together, they continue to oppress labourers in the province.”

Published in The Express Tribune, September 14^th,  2015.