Privatisation of state enterprises: ‘People left jobless, firms inefficient’

Conference highlights the shortcomings of over reliance on the ‘market’.

ISLAMABAD: The rationale behind selling state-owned enterprises to private entities “rendering them more inefficient and leaving thousands unemployed” was questioned on Sunday.

A large number of trade unionists, political workers, teachers, students and ordinary citizens vowed at a special roundtable conference to resist the privatisation of state enterprises.

The event was organised by the Anti-Privatisation Alliance at the National Press Club and featured the participation of a broad cross-section of representative workers and student organisations.

The conference unanimously passed resolutions demanding the rescinding of  PTCL’s privatisation, reinstatement of fired employees in Zarai Taraqiati Bank Limited, the immediate suspension of all plans to privatise further state enterprises, and new labour legislation that protects the rights of workers to assemble, organise and strike.

Similarly, the resolve to participate in the rally against privatisation that will be held on Tuesday was also expressed. The rally has been called upon by the Pakistan Worker’s Federation.

Participants at the conference also agreed to a general strike call in coming months if the government continued to “toe the line of the International Financial Institutions and pushed further privatisations.”

In his introductory remarks, Aasim Sajjad of the Worker’s Party Pakistan (WPP) said for the past two decades successive governments had adopted neo-liberal policies at the behest of international donors and pushed Pakistan’s working people into a state of economic and social misery.

He focused specifically on the policy of privatisation and said, “Around the world experts have asserted that the state should withdraw from the economic sphere and leave allocation of resources to the market. However, this policy ignores the working people.”

The result of this according to Sajjad was increased joblessness, deteriorating access to basic amenities such as health and education and general economic decline for Third World Countries such as Pakistan.

Moreover, Khawaja Sarmad of the Awami Jamhoori Forum provided detailed figures of privatisation in Pakistan since the early 1990s.

He noted that more than 160 public enterprises had been sold to private entities and the majority had subsequently shut down or were operating even more inefficiently than earlier.

He talked at length about the debacle of PTCL’s privatisation, noting that 40,000 workers of the enterprise “had been shunted out from their jobs while the share price had plummeted from Rs70 to Rs19.”

Furthermore, Nisar Shah, of the Labour Party Pakistan, spoke extensively on the upcoming privatisations of Pakistan Post and Islamabad Electric Supply Company. He warned that the Oil and Gas Development Company (OGDC) was once again on the chopping block after a move to privatise it was successfully repealed in late 2008.

Protesting the government’s plan to sell out at least 26 educational institutions in Punjab, he said that the government policy on education was resulting in an exponential increase in fees.

“This is also creating a rowing class divide in the society,” he added.

Among others who spoke at the event were Rana Hassan, Malik Maqbool and Azad Qadri of PTCL, Aqleem Khan of OGDC, Malik Fateh of WAPDA, Moazzam Khan of Pakistan Post, Zahoor Awan of the Pakistan Worker’s Federation, Raja Altaf of the Railway Workers Union, Dr Saghir Alam of the Punjab Teacher’s Union, and Alia Amirali of the National Students Federation.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 3^rd, 2011.