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Friday March 29, 2024

Steel mill workers take to streets against lay-offs, privatisation

By Zubair Ashraf
June 05, 2020

Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM) employees on Thursday held a protest demonstration against the federal government’s plan to lay off the entire 9,000 plus workforce and privatise the mill, demanding that the Centre withdraw the decision.

The Economic Coordination Committee on Wednesday had approved the retrenchment of 9,350 employees of the PSM on the Ministry of Industries & Production’s “human resource rationalisation plan” at a severance cost of around Rs20 billion.

“From the protest, the Rangers arrested four union leaders and shifted them to an undisclosed location,” Naveed Aftab, deputy convener of the Officers & Workers Action Committee (OWAC), told The News over the phone from the sit-in held for their release.

Aftab said the workers were peacefully marching out of Steel Town, the housing society of mill employees, but a heavy contingent of police and Rangers arrived to stop them from going further.

He added that the law enforcement agencies manhandled, dragged and arrested at least four of their companions, including Insaf Workers Union (CBA) Chairman Yasin Jamro, and the Progressive Workers Union’s Iftikhar Abbasi and Atif Azam.

“We are holding a sit-in and will not move from here until our people are released safe and sound,” said Aftab, adding that the future course of action will be decided then, because the workers have already rejected the so-called rationalisation plan.

He said that all unions of the PSM have formed an alliance under the banner of OWAC and they will launch a protest campaign against the retrenchment-privatisation decision. He added that the mill should have been revived instead.

“Protest is our constitutional right and the government is becoming draconian by stopping us from it,” he said, criticising the Sindh government of “backstabbing” the workers by using the law enforcement agencies against them.

National Trade Union Federation (NTUF) General Secretary Nasir Mansoor said: “On the one hand [Prime Minister] Imran Khan is sacking workers during the COVID-19 lockdown, while on the other hand, the Sindh government is dragging them to jails.”

Mansoor said that approximately six million people, including those self-employed, had lost their jobs and the crisis was deepening with the decisions like in the case of the PSM. He said that even the courts had failed to provide the workers relief.

He warned the federal and provincial governments against creating a situation like that in the US, where protests against the killing of a black man named George Floyd have spread across the country. “A worker may take to the street quite late, but when he does, he does it to not return empty-handed.”

According to the action committee, two workers, Yunus Baloch and Sarfaraz, have died of cardiac arrest during the last couple of days. Moreover, Ijaz Sammu suffered a heart attack at the demonstration and was rushed to the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases.

Asad is one of the 81 workers who were ordered to be reinstated and regularised at the PSM by the Sindh High Court in 2016, but they none of them got their job back. He has been taken aback by the retrenchment decision.

He said: “We have fought tooth and nail for years to get our jobs back, but in the end, this is what we get. They don’t even have a clear policy for the lay-offs, and given their history, it is not sure if the employees are going to get their due money.”

The action committee later informed The News that all of the arrested union leaders were released from the Shah Latif Town police station in the evening.