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208 authorities related to the receipt of their pension every month. Senior citizens
and physically challenged individuals had to wait in long queues, often for a
whole day, for their pensions. In numerous instances, pensioners had to make
several visits to get their pension. The president took notice of this situation in
July 2012 and a committee was formed to devise efficient plans for pension
disbursement. By September 2012, the committee, comprising chairman of
National Database and Registration Authority, Governor State Bank of Pakistan,
and the Ministry of Finance secretary, among others, came up with an electronic
banking system with biometric smart cards. The plan was slated to become
operational by the end of April 2013, after which all pensioners would be
issued smart cards and could withdraw their pension from any of the 600
selected bank branches nationwide.
Labour
Laws, policies, lacunas
While the deep-rooted issues faced by workers in Pakistan ought to be
covered by the laws on the statute books on the one hand and Pakistan’s
commitments under international human rights and labour treaties on the other,
lack of implementation and prioritisation has meant that there has been little
change on the ground as new human rights treaties have been signed and
ratified. Besides relevant provisions in the International Covenant on Social,
Economic and cultural Rights, and the Convention on the Rights of Child that
Pakistan is a party to, the country had ratified 36 ILO conventions of which
34 were in force. The ILO conventions ratified by Pakistan cover forced
labour (Convention 29), freedom of association and protection of the right to
organise (Convention 87), right to organise and collective bargaining (Convention
98), equal remuneration for work of equal value (Convention 100), abolition
of forced labour (Convention 105), and discrimination in employment and
occupation (Convention 111), among others. Despite these commitments and
ratifications, however, numerous anti-labour policies and practices continued.
The devolution of legislative authority from the federal to the provincial
governments under the 18th Amendment to the Constitution was followed by
disparity in the provinces’ response to workers’ issues. The provinces could
now devise any policy on labour without any check from the centre. However,
the provinces made little use of this new legislative authority. The government
of Pakistan claimed in the report it submitted to the United Nations for the
country’s Universal Periodic Review in 2012 that curbs on trade union activities
had been effectively lifted, even though the majority of the labour force was
denied that right. Formation of national, industry-wide trade unions was not
possible after the National Industrial Relations Commission (NIRC) was
abolished as a result of the 18th Constitutional Amendment. The national law
has been replaced by the Provincial Industrial Relations Act which has been
adopted by all four provinces with some changes. The IRA adopted in Punjab,
for example, stipulated that in order to form a trade union there must be at
least 50 workers in a factory. In order to fill the legal vacuum at the federal