Piler chief to speak on social & labour issues in Canada

Karachi
The executive director of the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (Piler), Karamat Ali, will speak about social, political and labour issues in Pakistan at a seminar on “Pakistan Today”, being organised by the South Asia Centre (CERAS) in Montreal, Canada, on Sunday.
The Piler head is currently in Canada on an invitation from CERAS and other Canadian organisations to deliver talks in various events.
Before his arrival in Canada, he visited Germany and attended a conference on working conditions in the textile industry. The conference was organised by the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR).
Ali spoke on the disappearance of the state after the initiation of a restructuring programme pushed by the IMF in the 1980s. As a condition for lending to Pakistan, the IMF demanded massive state austerity measures and the deregulation of the labour market, in part by restricting labour safety laws. Austerity and deregulation contributed to the fatal catastrophes in recent years.
He stressed that incidents like the Baldia factory fire in Karachi were not natural disasters; they were manmade. During his stay in Canada, Karamat Ali will also speak on “Pakistan-India Peace: People's Need vs State Interest” jointly organised by the South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy and Committee of Progressive Pakistani Canadians (CPPC) at Surrey Centre Library.