- Says hospital facilities for workers would be improved speedily, committees formed to tackle bonded labour
Punjab Labour Minister Raja Ashfaq Sarwar on Tuesday announced the suspension of Multan Social Security Hospital’s MS for negligence, and informed at a press conference at Punjab Assembly that CT scan, angiography and gamma machines would be made functional as soon as possible.
He said he had accelerated efforts to repair these machines in the past two weeks, which had not been working for the last two and a half years, adding that an inquiry about the MS’s inefficiency was underway.
The department has taken up the matter of the workers’ registration because it is necessary to ensure basic facilities provision to them, the minister said. Steps should be taken to ensure their proper care by creating a conducive atmosphere in factories, he said.
Sarwar said that he would visit different districts weekly and directed all hospitals to keep their machinery functional so that patients would not face any inconvenience.
He also informed that electricity had been provided to the Labour Welfare Colony inaugurated in May 2012.
He told that the Punjab Labour Department was bearing the expenses for educating the labourers’ children and was giving scholarships of Rs 2,500 each to graduate and Rs 3,500 to Masters’ students.
The minister said that the Workers Welfare Complex in Muzaffargarh had been completed, and while responding to a question, he said that there were many problems related to bonded labour, child labour and forced labour in the province, and he had formed committees to tackle them.
