KARACHI: The representatives of major trade unions and other labour organisations on Tuesday launched a National Labour Council (NLC) – a common platform to aggressively fight for the workers’ rights.
Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) Labour Union Chairman Abdul Lateef Nizamani was nominated as its convener and Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (PILER) Chief Karamat Ali as the council’s secretary – for three months – to work on the council’s structure and line of action.
Nizamani, Ali and Habib Bank Limited (HBL) Labour Union leader Habibuddin Junaid along with other labour union chiefs held a joint press conference on Tuesday and highlighted the council’s main features.
There are 8,500 labour unions and 100 labour federations in Pakistan, but a joint platform was needed to raise the workers’ voice more forcefully to guard their interests, he said and added that there were at least 60 million workers across the country but only half a million had registered with the labour unions.
According to Karamat, all the trade unions and the organisations supporting labourers would file a joint petition with the Balochistan High Court (BHC) against the Gadani incident. Nizamani then requested all trade unions to join the council at the earliest to make it the most powerful forumfor the country’s workers.
