The right to protest peacefully to demand attention to specific problems or raise demands is a right in almost all democracies. The PTI has acknowledged this on more than one occasion. But it appears that this right is limited only to the ruling party itself. While the PTI had staged protests on many occasions, including the ‘dharna’ in Islamabad, it has refused to allow others to do the same. On Wednesday, Islamabad saw scenes which at times resembled virtual civil war as police fired volleys of teargas on government employees who had gathered to demand an increase in their pays. Though the PTI government has finally agreed to a 20-25 percent salary increase for its employees on an ad-hoc basis, it could have resolved the problem much earlier and in a better and peaceful manner. The brutal use of teargas shelling was totally uncalled for.
The most important demand of the employees was a pay raise that they expected in view of the rising inflation during the past 30 months. The government arrested dozens of protesters and in the beginning only a deputy commissioner was trying to negotiate with them. On the second day of the protest, the employees enlarged their scope and spread from Cabinet Block and Constitution Avenue to Secretariat Block. Protesters also gathered outside the National Press Club where employees from Balochistan and Punjab joined them. The All Pakistan Government Employees (APGE) and All Pakistan Teachers Association (APTA) were also calling for regularization of contractual employees and reducing the huge disparities in salaries of different cadres and scales. The police resorted to their usual tactics of blocking the roads by placing containers and sealing off the areas where the employees were staging their protests.
The raise in salaries is a step in the right direction as the rise in prices of basic commodities has become unbearable for the salaried class belonging to both the government and the private sectors. Due to an absence of forceful trade union activities in the country, private-sector employees lack a unified voice for their demands. There was a time when each business or industrial concern having more than a dozen employees had a collective bargaining association of its employees. Such labour laws are still in place but their enforcement is an issue. The main issue though was the manner in which the government handled a peaceful protest. It would not have been difficult to send government representatives to talk to government employees who basically wanted some assurance that their difficulties would be overcome. We hope these issues will be worked out ahead of the next budget. But the methods used consistently by the current government to deal with protests are alarming. Violence has been used against health workers, against students, against teachers and against others. This is not the way a democracy operates.