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in clearly exploitative conditions, that the establishment had not been assessed
for environmental impact and the premises had not been inspected because
the provincial government had abolished labour inspectors’ visits to factories
since 2002. “The banning of labour inspection is a travesty that amounts to
the government’s acquiescence into industrialists’ greedy operations above all
else. How such an indefensible policy continues to prevail says something
about the persuasive power of big business. If such appalling exploitation and
illegalities go on unnoticed and unchecked in the country’s second largest city,
it should not be too difficult for anyone, including the rulers, to imagine how
bad things must be in places that are not quite so close to the seat of government
or are not as well covered by the media,” HRCP said. The government must
preempt such tragedies rather than reacting with posthumous compensation
packages and rhetoric.
May 31: The whole system of labour courts and tribunals needed to be
reviewed if the goal of expeditious and fair adjudication of labour cases was to
be realised. This was the main recommendation of the expert group comprising
trade union representatives, lawyers specialising in labour cases and civil society
organizations that met at HRCP. The Commission said in a statement that the
meeting was of the view that the working of labour courts and tribunals could
not be viewed in isolation from the state’s attitude towards the rights and
problems of workers. As the government had little time for drawing up a
labour policy or any programme for labour’s uplift it tended to ignore the need
to make the forums for redress of labour’s grievances efficient and effective.
The experts’ group expressed concern that a large number of workers could
not access labour courts because either they had no documents to establish
their employment by their employers or they did not fall in the legal definition
of workmen. This problem needed to be resolved on priority basis. The new
provincial labour laws, except for the one adopted by Balochistan, did not
explicitly provide for the high courts’ right to oversee the working of labour
courts/tribunals. The supervisory role of the high courts needed to be explicitly
defined. The heavy load of work at most of the labour forums was causing
delays. The number of labour courts, or at least the number of judges at the
existing courts, needed to be increased. The group favoured the creation of a
judicial service exclusively trained in labour laws or training of labour courts’
judges in labour rights and disputes. It was recommended that labour laws
should be included as a compulsory subject in the curriculum of law schools.
The group was concerned at the lack of attention to the urgency of revising
labour laws and making them more just and equitable. Finally, the group called
upon trade unions not to rely wholly on the government functionaries’ plans
and policies and to train their members for effective advocacy in support of
workers who were unlawfully dealt with by their employers.
June 25: Bonded labour remained one of the most reprehensible and
widespread forms of exploitation in Pakistan even 20 years after the
promulgation of a law to abolish it, and therefore the state and civil society
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State of Human Rights in 2012