Ensuring that their rights are protected is due us
So that one day, the May Day, to honour those who make lives easier for the rest of humanity has gone by, and without much fanfare. It is a day to look around and appreciate the effort and work they put in to make life worthwhile for others while going through what most others won’t like to. No doubt one needs more than just a day if one wanted to look into under what conditions the labourers work and survive. And this is one perspective that relate pretty much to the situation in Pakistan where going has been getting tough over the past few years.
Power crisis, increasing load shedding, gas shortage, price hikes, and an endemic lack of security are but a few problems that the whole country is facing right now but these problems take a whole new form for the poor labourers, fort they don’t have means to find alternatives. As a result, they fall down into a vicious circle of poverty from where escape for them is nigh impossible. Much of Pakistan’s labour class is unaware of their rights. In rural areas of Punjab and Sindh, many of them are still found working as bonded labour, or working on some feudal lord’s lands, trying to pay off debt that their forefathers took and whose interest has grown more than the principal amount, children as young as five years old are working in workshops, industrial labour has no option other than to work without proper safety equipment, no health insurance or other benefits are offered and on job training is virtually unheard of. What this translates into is that even though we have a huge labour force, an asset for the country otherwise, which is treated in not so humanely fashion and their contributions to the society often ignored.
Improving their condition is not that difficult, in fact, if the government, and we as individuals, put our backs into it. The very first thing that should be done is to ensure that their rights are not only protected but also afforded to them. Minimum wages must be set and changed according to the inflation in the market. Job creation for this class would only be possible when there is electricity and investment, both local and international, and when there is an improvement in the security situation. Instead of dealing the labour classes as a burden and looking down upon them, they should be offered the same level of respect and honour, if not more. Only by doing so would we be able to alienate their fears and sense of being downtrodden, while bringing them to a level where they are given the respect that is due them.