Rights activists and trade union leaders tell lawmakers that Sindh Tenancy Act,
1950 does not grant agriculture sector workers their due rights
Rights activists and trade union leaders urged the lawmakers of the Sindh Assembly on Friday to initiate a debate on workers’ rights and suggested amending the Sindh Tenancy Act, 1950 and other labour laws to ensure social security to all workers.
Several rights activists and trade union leaders met with MPAs at a consultation organised by the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research at a hotel.
The MPAs included Nusrat Sehar Abbasi, Naheed Begum, Dr Mahesh Kumar Malani, Naila Munir, Sorath Thebo, Kalsoom Chandio and Dr. Sikandar Shoro. They also were briefed about the non-implementation of the existing labour laws in Sindh.
The participants of the meeting were informed that in 2009, peasants’ rights activists had started a long march from Hyderabad and culminated outside the Sindh Assembly building in Karachi. The workers’ representatives had presented a draft of amendments to the Sindh Tenancy Act, 1950 to the deputy speaker.
Later, a parliamentary committee was formed that discussed the Sindh Tenancy Act during the last provincial government’s tenure (2008-2013) and prepared amendments, but unfortunately its recommendations were not presented in the House.
At the end of the previous Sindh Assembly’s tenure in March 2013, the legislature had passed some minor amendments to the Sindh Tenancy Act, which actually proved to be counterproductive for the workers. The MPAs assured the activists that they would raise the issues of the workers in agriculture and other sectors in the House.
The lawmakers also asked the activists to provide them with the required information about various lacunae in the labour laws.
Speaking on the occasion, Karamat Ali, the executive director of Piler, said presently the majority of labourers were deprived of their two major rights, the right to forms associations and the right to collective bargaining, which were ensured under the Constitution and International Labour Organisation Conventions.
He asked the members of the Sindh Assembly to make a separate law for the registration of trade unions on the pattern of the India Trade Union Act, 1926 for which the father of the nation, Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, had played a significant role in the Indian legislative assembly.
“The law was later adopted by Pakistan after Independence but military dictator Ayub Khan had scrapped that important piece of legislation and since then it has not been restored,” he noted.
“After the 18th amendment, labour has become the provincial subject and the Sindh Assembly can adopt that Trade Unions Act,” he added.
Alsi also said the lacunae in the recently passed Sindh Prohibition of Employment of Children Bill, 2017 in which the minimum age for a child to start working had been fixed at 14 years.
He explained that it was in contradiction of Article 25-A of the Constitution, which ensured that the State would provide compulsory education to every child up to the age of 16 years. Under the Child Rights Convention, he added, the age to start working has been fixed at 18 years.
Zulfiqar Shah, the joint director of Piler, informed the participants of the meeting that Pakistan had ratified 36 Conventions of the ILO, including eight core labour standards. Unfortunately, he added, these eight conventions were not implemented and the required legislation was missing.
Shah noted that the majority of workers in the agriculture sector were not covered under existing labour laws. There is a separate law which deals with agriculture workers, that is, the Sindh Tenancy Act, but the majority of the workers are unable to avail their rights under this law. He also pointed out that non-agriculture workers were mostly working in the informal sector, which formed 73 percent of the total workforce.
Veteran trade union leader Habibuddin Junaidi, Sadiqa Salahuddin of the Indus Resource Centre, Raheema Panhwar of the Strengthening Participatory Organisation, Naghma Shaikh of the Democracy Reporting International and Zeenia Shaukat of the Sindh Human Rights Commission also participated in the discussion.