Expressing solidarity with leaders of the National Labour Federation that have gone on hunger strike, Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) Karachi Emir Hafiz Naeemur Rehman on Wednesday said the government must ensure that jobs of all those workers who have been laid off during the lockdown regime are restored. He also demanded that the workers are paid salaries on time during the crisis.
The NLF, which is the labour organisation of the JI, had announced a hunger strike outside the Karachi Press Club against the lay-offs of workers by various factories during the ongoing lockdown. A large number of labour leaders attended their protest camp on Wednesday to support the NLF’s demands.
During his visit to the camp, the JI Karachi chief offered juice to workers and suggested to them to convert their strike to protests. “Under the lockdown conditions, the labour class is suffering massively,” Rehman said.
He added that Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah and Labour Minister Saeed Ghani had promised that no worker would be dismissed nor would their salaries be stopped but on the contrary, factory owners did not make payments to workers, and laid them off.
He demanded that the government take action against such factory owners and keep its promises to the workers. The JI city chief said Sindh could allow factories to operate after adopting standard operating procedures like Punjab. The mill owners earn billions of rupees and they should provide relief to their workers in these difficult times, he remarked.
NLF Karachi President Khalid Khan said it was a joint demand of workers that the labour minister should resign as he had failed to resolve the labour issues. “It is the government’s prime responsibility that it should ask the factories to provide them lists of workers and ensure that they were being paid during the lockdown,” he said.
The government had closed the factories and industries in the city during the lockdown to combat the coronavirus pandemic, and had also issued some notifications to safeguard the workers’ rights, according to which the workers were supposed to get paid and factory owners were barred from firing them.
Khan said the labour department had been in collusion with factory owners as it earlier had promised reinstatement of jobs and payment to workers but in the second notification, no such clause was present. JI Information Secretary Zahid Askari said the labour class had suffered a lot and were starving while the government was doing nothing for them.
NLF Secretary General Qasim Jamal, Raja Abdul Munaf of Prem Labour Union, M Junaid, Yaqoob Sheikh and Irshad Bhutto also addressed the camp.
