Labour rights

The poor condition of the rights of the working class in the country is not a new story. But it is important to highlight the plight of workers in the hope that someone in the upper echelons of the government might care. In the last week, a video has recently emerged of a factory owner in the Baldia area in Karachi brutally thrashing factory workers, including slapping a female staff member and beating male workers with sticks. The owner’s behaviour was captured via CCTV footage and released. The ensuing outrage on social media brought it to the notice of the media and the Sindh government. Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah announced that he had ordered an inquiry into the factory owner. But it has been almost a week since the announcement was made and little is known about the progress made in this regard. One hopes this action was not just a political move during what is now looking like election mode for almost all parties. The unfortunate reality is that incidents such as this are likely an ordinary affair in many factories around the country. Earlier this year, a case was registered against factory owners in Sialkot for tying up their workers with chains. The response should have been a restoration of factory inspections and proactive action against such abuse. That, however, did not happen.

The only way to make these incidents unacceptable is to order an investigation into human rights conditions in industrial workplaces. This is something that should have been done years ago. There have been no lessons from the Baldia Town factory fire, which killed almost 300 workers. This sort of apathy also led to the deaths of almost a hundred workers at the Gadani ship-breaking yard last year. And this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to labour rights violations throughout the country. The country’s working class and its rights at work are the last priority of any sitting government. The failure to take any action is so ordinary that it is no longer considered to be a story worth telling. But the video from the factory in Baldia has shown us once again how important it is for the government to intervene in the matter of the rights of workers in the workplace. The social media release of the video also shows how workers can generate some action by taking matters into their own hands. What we do hope is that this leads to at least some review of existing factory regulations.