The Sindh government has prepared a separate law on the occupational health and safety (OHS) on work place and a tripartite consultation process has been initiated to get recommendations on this new law which would also be extended to the commercial establishments besides the industries.
Joint Director of Sindh Labour Department Ghufran Memon stated this while speaking at a round table on “Health and Safety at Workplace: Local Realities and Global Perspective” jointly organised by Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research and Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology (SZABIST) at ZABIST Campus on Saturday.
Currently only one chapter of Factories Act 1934 deals with OHS and there was need for a separate law, he said, adding that for the new law the first consultation would be held in Sukkur, and then in Hyderabad and Karachi during the current month.
The provincial government has already enacted the Industrial Relations Act in which agriculture workers and fishermen were also included in the definition of workers, thus they have now a right to form their unions and avail the same benefits available for industrial and commercial labour.
Talking about Ali Enterprises incident at Baldia Karachi in 2012, Memon said according to the provincial labour department’s record that factory was not registered, thus no inspection was conducted there. He said it was incorrect to say that inspection of industries was not happening in Sindh.
The Sindh government had started registration of home-based workers and the process had been initiated from Hyderabad as a pilot project with the support from UN women, and after that it would be extended to the entire province.
Speaking on the occasion, senior lawyer Faisal Siddiqi said despite the fact that no inspection had ever been conducted in the Ali Enterprise, the garment factory had acquired social accountability’s 8,000 certificate from an Italian company to export its products in the European markets. “If we need industrial and employment growth we need to follow all the relevant laws of the land.”
At Ali enterprises, he pointed out, the owners had locked all the exit doors in order to save their valuable things inside the factory. The owners fled away from the scene when fire spread over, keeping the doors locked. It was a murder according to the law, he added.