Musharraf Humayun, finance secretary of the
Ship-breaking Labour Union, Gadani, said on Tuesday theirs was the only labour
union of the ship-breaking industry and that all other labour unions were just
an attempt to disgrace their union.
Speaking at a press conference at the Karachi
Press Club, he said the Gadani ship-breaking yard was spread over 132 plots
along the Mekran coast with 39 companies engaged in the endeavour of
ship-breaking.
There was a yard on which a major accident
took place on November 1, 2016, and since then there were fake groups who had
an eye on this piece of land and masqueraded as leaders of workers, thus
misleading the work force, he added.
Humayun alleged that these elements sponsored
unauthorised press conferences and claimed to be the flag-bearers of the
workers’ rights, which, he said, was utter poppycock.
He claimed that the Ship-breaking labour
Union, Gadani, was the sole representative of the ship-breaking workers and the
sole CBA, but fake labour unions were misstating the version of the genuine
union.
At this juncture, Humayun identified the
person who was the focus of his ire, Nasir Mansoor, deputy secretary general of
The Federation of Pakistan Trade Unions, and debunking Nasir’s claim that the
hospital at the ship-breaking yard had only one ambulance, he said that there
were now 22 ambulances.
He said that contrary to Mansoor’s claims,
all health and safety provisions were there at the yard. Referring to the
tragedy of November 1, 2016, wherein 26 people burned to death and four are
still missing, he said that the next-of-kin of the casualties had been given
Rs1.1 million each by the ship-breakers’ association and Rs5,00,000 each from the government-constituted Workers
Welfare Fund, with Rs50,000 each for those with minor injuries and Rs100,000
each for those with grievous injuries.
He claimed that there was total adherence to
environmental laws at the yard. Taking
his focus away from Mansoor, he called on the government to take care of the
problem of the non-arrival of tankers at the ship-breaking yard after the
November 1, 2016, tragedy.
The process for the other ships had become so
expensive, he said, that very few ships were coming. He called upon the
government to tackle these two problems.
Source:
the news. 09 August 2017
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