Killing of PIA workers widely condemned

LAHORE

The Awami Workers Party Lahore chapter has strongly condemned violence against workers of the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) Tuesday in which at least two workers in Karachi were killed and scores injured. 

The AWP also condemned the imposition of Essential Services Maintenance Act to stamp out the workers’ right to protest for their rights. The party has called for a protest in solidarity with PIA workers today (Wednesday).

It is necessary to point out that all governments attempted to privatise PIA and exploit it for their own political and economic interests. The reasons given to public for the privatisation of the national carrier - incompetence, wasteful expenditure, declining service standards, gross mismanagement - are a result of myopic policies of successive regimes. 

Yet, all research into the privatisation of public assets since the 90s demonstrates how the process has been marred by corruption, cronyism, asset-stripping, as well as aggravating social problems such as unemployment. 

In bizarre irony, the political elite of the country, which has used public institutions for financial gains and petty electoral considerations, have been handed over the responsibility of overseeing the “transparent handing over” of Pakistan’s national assets. Without an accountability process of the highly dubious previous privatisation projects, once again, it is the ordinary workers and citizens who will face the brunt of the elite’s economic mismanagement. More importantly, if crucial policy decisions affecting millions of citizens are not presented in front of the public for a thorough debate, and instead are decided by technocrats from the IMF, it will raise serious questions on the efficacy of a parliament allegedly representing the “will of the people”.

The government’s attempts to bundle-off and privatise segments of the Water and Power Development Authority have only served to highlight the failure of a neo-liberal capitalist system. The argument that privatisation will make ‘lumbering’ state-owned enterprises more efficient has fallen on its own merit with the case of power supply companies. Yet the government is going ahead with an aggressive gamble in privatising the PIA. 

The brunt of this failed experiment being repeated over and over again falls on the workers. Now with the right to strike and protest taken away, the space to even demonstrate dissent against these myopic policies is being stamped out. 

The AWP demanded an immediate end to privatisation policies and expressed complete solidarity with the striking workers who are demanding nothing but a life of dignity. 

PML-Q: Pakistan Muslim League-Q (PML-Q) President and former Prime Minister Ch Shujaat Hussain and senior central leader and former Deputy Prime Minister Ch Pervaiz Elahi have condemned ruthless violence perpetrated to PIA employees by the Nawaz Sharif government.

In a joint statement issued on Tuesday, they said strike and protest by the PIA employees were an ample proof of the failure of Nawaz Sharif government whose policies had made people's life miserable. He further said government was responsible for baton-charging and perpetrating violence to workers and killing of protesting employees instead of satisfying them through negotiation.