Sindh Labour Code won’t be enforced without consulting workers’ representatives, Saeed Ghani tells Piler conference

KARACHI: Labour Minister Saeed Ghani has said that the proposed Sindh Labour Code will not be enforced without consultation with labour representatives, and no decision would be taken in this regard without reaching a consensus. He was speaking at the National Labour Conference 2026, held on the theme ‘Jobs, Economy, Privatisation and Climate in Pakistan’, organised by the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (Piler) at the Piler Centre on Saturday. The moot brought together trade unionists, researchers, lawyers, journalists, climate experts, human rights defenders, policymakers and a large number of workers from across the country. Mr Ghani said that the government wanted to take everyone on board on a shared agenda at a moment of deep economic and climate strain rather than impose the code upon workers. Announces plan to hand over management of Valika Hospital to private entity He also referred to the HIV cases issue reported at Valika Hospital, and said that the government was willing to bear the treatment costs of the affected children and was building a system to sustain that support, and that Valika and Landhi hospitals would be upgraded to provide better health services to workers. He said he considered privatisation a “heinous crime”, arguing that once a government institution was privatised, there was no effective mechanism for subsequent checks and balances. He alleged that buyers of privatised institutions often sold their land and machinery, leaving workers unemployed. However, he announced that his government was going to hand over management control of Valika Hospital to a private party. “Under the first phase of a public-private partnership arrangement, Valika Hospital at SITE is being handed over to private management,” he said, clarifying that the private entity would only manage the hospital, while ownership would remain with the Labour Department and all responsibility would continue to rest with the government. He said Landhi and other hospitals would subsequently also be handed over to private management in order to improve their standards. Earlier, Economist Dr Asim Bashir said Pakistan was running a persistent trade deficit and was under debt stress, yet lacked a coherent, scientific strategy to resolve the crisis. It is a low-income country, he added, bearing the tax burden of a high-income one. Senior economist Dr Asad Sayeed said that inflation had eroded the purchasing power of workers, pushing the poverty rate up to 33 to 34 per cent and lowering living standards. He also drew attention to stunted growth among children. Labour expert Abida Ali pointed to a stark gap between the wages of men and women, saying women were paid less than their male counterparts. “International labour standard need to be translated into local law, and no solution is possible unless workers are organised at the shop-floor level,” she added. Muttahida Labour Federation Punjab general secretary Hanif Ramay, speaking on the proposed Punjab Labour Code, warned that such measures were normalising third-party contracting, and that if the codes were implemented, workers across the country would be outsourced. Trade unionist Qamarul Hasan said the labour codes were an attempt to strip away workers’ rights, adding that Sindh had resisted them and would continue to do so. He said the codes raised many objections over definitions and interpretations, and stressed that sectoral unions were needed to enable collective bargaining at the macro level. Piler’s Executive Director Abbas Haider said that the organisation has spent more than four decades educating and organising workers, documenting their grievances over wage theft, unfair dismissals and harassment while researching emerging threats such as heat stress on the shop floor. “These are no longer separate struggles,” he said. “Economic pressure, weak enforcement of rights, privatisation and climate change are bearing down on the same working families, and our task now is to turn that shared understanding into a shared agenda,” he added. The conference concluded with a set of recommendations, which included the immediate enforcement of the statutory minimum wage, backed by real penalties for non-compliance; a guarantee of workers’ constitutional right to freedom of association and collective bargaining, along with simpler, time-bound trade union registration and protection against the victimisation of organisers; and universal social security coverage for informal, contractual and other non-standard workers, including the growing ranks of gig and platform workers left outside existing protections. The recommendations also called for recognising heat stress and other climate-related hazards as occupational safety risks, obliging employers to provide water, rest, shade and heat-action plans; strengthening safety protections in the mining sector; ensuring functioning harassment committees with meaningful representation of women workers; ratifying and implementing ILO Conventions No. 155 and No. 187 on occupational safety and health; ending the misuse of third-party contracting to evade employer responsibilities; and requiring international brands to ensure their suppliers meet national labour laws and international standards across the supply chain. The conference also demanded an immediate halt to the privatisation of the Lady Health Workers programme, or outsourcing to the People’s Primary Healthcare Initiative or any other third party or contractor. A proper service structure for the workers with time-bound promotions, and the provision of pensions for retired Lady Health Workers were also demanded. Other speakers at the conference included Dr Syed Jaffar Ahmed; journalist Afia Salam, South Asia Partnership Pakistan executive director Mohammad Tahseen, All Pakistan Wapda Hydro Electric Central Labour Union president Latif Nizamani, Sultan Muhammad Khan of the All Pakistan Coal Mines Labour Federation, gender issues expert Faiza Shaikh; labour expert Javed Gill; National Trade Union Federation general secretary Nasir Mansoor; All Sindh Lady Health Workers and Employees Union general secretary Shama Gillani and president Bushra Arain; Railway Workers Union general secretary Rao Naseem; Climate Action Centre’s Yasir Hussain; Khalid Mahmood of the Labour Education Foundation; Saeed Baloch of the Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum; Professor Riaz Sheikh from Szabist; women’s rights activist Mahnaz Rahman; Tahir Hasan Khan of the Karachi Union of Journalists; and Habibuddin Junaidi of the Peoples Labour Bureau, Sindh. Published in Dawn, September 20th, 2026 Source (Dawn News): Read full article