‘Industries would be bound to employ local people’

Sindh Industries and Commerce Minister Manzoor Hussain Wassan has said industries in the province would be bound under a newly drafted law to regulate industrial units in the province to create job opportunities for local people every year.

Chairing a meeting at the Sindh Secretariat on Friday on the proposed Sindh Registration Act 2017, he said the industries in the province would not be allowed to give preference to people of other provinces over local applicants for jobs.

He said the industrial units in Karachi, Hyderabad, Larkana, Sukkur, Mirpurkhas, and Nawabshah would be required to employ people domiciled in Sindh, warning that industries failing to follow the new law would be taken to task. Wassan said the registration of industrial units in the province had been closed for 27 years and government had decided to resume the process.

He noted that under the new law, every industrial unit in the province would be required to set up its own effluent treatment plant. He added that Sindh had become the first province to install a combined effluent treatment plant for industries in Kotri. During the last two years, he said, the government had completed a number of schemes for the development of infrastructure in industrial zones of the province.

The minister said the government was going to take an initiative to restart the process to register industries and as such the industrialists should support the government’s drive. He vowed that the government would provide utmost support to industrialists for resolving their issues.