Implementation of labour laws urged

KARACHI: Convener, People's Labour Bureau Sindh, Habibuddin Junaidi has called for earliest implementation of labour laws in the country as the labour class is facing many social and economic issues.

The increasing unemployment had become a serious challenge to the country and the workers and their families were the worst affected, he said while talking to APP here.

Junaidi said that the minimum monthly wages for a worker should be Rs22,000 as it was quite difficult to meet even basic needs of a small family with Rs14000 monthly income, which is fixed as minimum wages.

The wages for workers be decided through tri-partite committee comprising representatives of the concerned departments of Federal and Provincial governments, and of employers and workers after detailed discussions keeping before the ground realities. The wages should provide a reasonably good life to workers and their families. This committee existed but was not functional, he regretted.

He said that employers adopted contract system of employment simply to pay less to their workers and other employees. Most of them were not even issue the appointment orders so that the employees could not press for their legitimate rights.

He pointed out that there were around 650 million workers in the country, but hardly 0.6 million were registered with Social Security or other workers welfare institutions for the same reason.  The senior labour leader expressed his satisfaction that the Sindh government had carried out good legislation. However, the implementation issue was there.

He also urged that provincial and federal governments should also come up with more training programmes for enhancing skills among the labouring class to meet the demand of industrial growth and to export the manpower.