Nine years on, no lessons learnt from Baldia factory fire

KARACHI: Speakers at a meeting have stressed that a joint platform at national level is necessary to safeguard workers’ rights and movement because the health and safety conditions at factories are still at their worst even after the passage of nine years since the Baldia garment factory fire that killed 260 workers.

Addressing a two-day meeting titled ‘Recalling Baldia Factory Fire: Exploring Opportunities for Safe Workplaces in Pakistan’ held at the Piler Centre, trade unions leaders, experts and civil society activists said that the federal and Sindh governments have not demonstrated any seriousness in implementing the labour laws, and factories in the country still lack in their measures concerning health and safety issues.

“Pakistani factories have still not learnt from the incident of the Ali Enterprises. These factories don’t have a proper emergency alarm system. Workers are also not educated to use the fire extinguisher. And they don’t seem to have any plan to ensure emergency exits,” said Karamat Ali, executive director of the Pakistan Institute of Labour Research & Education (Piler). “In this power imbalanced society, where workers are exploited and labour laws aren’t implemented, the trade union movement has systematically been reduced from time to time since Pakistan’s independence, and now only one per cent of the workers are unionised in the country.”

He said that the Ali Enterprises factory incident united workers on a global platform through the Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC), resulting in the distribution of short- and long-term compensation among workers by the Sindh High Court. “So, we need a similar united platform at regional and national levels to strengthen our movement and to improve workers’ health and safety.” Nasir Mansoor of the National Trade Union Federation said that the recent factory fire in Korangi’s Mehran Town harked back to the Ali Enterprises incident in which fire engines could not enter the factory, and the space was so confined that the workers could not escape from the factory.

He lamented that no health and safety inspection is conducted at factories. “The CCC and the ECCHR guided us and supported us internationally for the cause of the Ali Enterprises, and because of their efforts, European brands have come under European law for workers’ compensation, especially the Ali Enterprises factory’s German brand KiK Textilien.” Ineke-Zeldenrust, international coordinator for the CCC, shared with the participants the international accord to improve health and safety conditions in the Bangladeshi textile and garment industry, and this agreement will be expanded to Pakistan.

The agreement is between international brands and international trade unions and the Bangladeshi trade unions to pressurise these brands’ sellers to improve health and safety conditions in Bangladesh. The accord is going to be implemented in Pakistan, as the evidence suggests that when Bangladeshi factories improved their health and safety conditions, it helped increase investment and exports of Bangladesh.

The meeting decided to hold a National Convention for Workers Confederation in Islamabad next month to organise workers and ensure labour rights all over Pakistan. Before the convention, labour groups will organise meetings in each province to prepare for the convention and to draw amendments to the country’s constitution.

The meeting also expressed willingness to organise workers of farms and factories at provincial and national levels. They stressed that the government must restore factory inspections and effectively implement health and safety laws at factories across Pakistan.