The Sindh Labour and Human Rights Department (L&HR) is very proud the provincial assembly enacted thirteen Laws and Acts for the benefit of workers, between 2013-2015. The legislation is admirable. Some day, in the distant future, these will prove useful, but at present are impracticable, not feasible, because there is no statutory mechanism to ensure the employers will adhere to the laws.
In Karachi only large-scale industries, particularly the multinational outfits obey the laws and acts because their workers are bonafide employees. An optimistic estimate might put the number of beneficiaries to be 20 percent of the labour force in the city. The remainder toiling in thousands of small mills and factories are contract labour. The contracts are short-term, and may be renewed or not. These workers are not eligible for welfare fund or social security. Many of them may work in the same mill or factory through their entire life, having the contracts renewed over and over again, but they are not eligible for old-age benefits. Contracts are how the employers hoodwink the government and the workers.
There is such a shortage of jobs that workers put up with the inequity. Their attitude is: 'It is better to earn something than to be unemployed'. The fear of loss of job is what makes them accept the injustice, even though they are aware their rights are being denied.
The same fear of losing their meager bread is what has allowed brick-kiln owners to exploit the workers. Bonded labour continues, and will continue despite the enactment of the Sindh Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act 2015.
Besides industrial workers Karachi also has a huge labour force which is ignored by the laws and acts enacted in Sindh Assembly. They include the housemaids, the small boys, the ubiquitous 'chota' who work in motor garages, the vegetable vendor pushing his cart in the heat of the day from lane to lane, ditto the ice-cream seller the ruddiwala, the ragpickers. The needle-workers (embroiderers) embellishing designer outfits, the bus, rickshaw and taxi drivers, plumbers, masons, electricians, house painters. The oil pressers in Empress Market, the mochi and boot-polisher sitting at street corners earning a few rupees if they are lucky to have customers (they are a dying breed since shoe repair, and boots which need polish are obsolete), the knife grinder. The list is endless, you could add to it yourself. The point is Karachi cannot do without them. This is a modern city, but unlike the middle-class in developed countries, we Karachiites do not have the skill to saw the wood, lay the brick, paint the walls, nor do we do any housework such as cleaning and scrubbing, unplugging a clogged drain. We are pampered by the workforce.
Nevertheless, we do not appreciate them. We complain: always absent from work, sleeps on the job, sells substandard goods, repairs one thing in the car and spoils another thing, cheats, steals. On the other hand, our attitude is sympathetic towards industrial labourforce. We see them as victims and the employers as tyrants. The Press and electronic media play along. You never hear the end of more than 250 workers who died in the Baldia factory fire in September 2012.
A typical remark is that the tyranny of the boss, the failure to implement laws and disregard of human rights of the workers is a reason why foreign investors shy away from setting up manufacturing plants in Karachi. This is nonsense. No investor is deterred by city's fragile law and order or the state of locally operated factories and mills. They shy away from bad politics, from greedy government, lazy bureaucrats who take ages to move files and are forever creating hurdles. An industry the foreign investors would run it according to their high standards and international labour laws. In tyring to smooth the path to install such a set up they have to deal with politicians and officialdom, the most fickle, unstable and unreliable but powerful people. These they cannot handle with reason and dignity.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2017