HARIPUR: Hattar Industrial Estate industrialists have threatened to go on strike against the district administration’s push to ‘force’ the units to implement the government’s minimum wage policy.
Speaking at a meeting here on Wednesday, representatives of the Hattar Industrialists Association (HIA) rejected therecently constituted committee comprising officials from the district administration and different departments to visit units and gather data.
The association’s chairman Malik Ashig Awan presided over the meeting.
The body’s general secretary Safeer Akhtar Awan, chief patron Abdul Qadir and senior vice-president Haji Atta ur Rehman were also in attendance.
They argued that 32federal and provincial departments were already monitoring industrial activities and implementing labour laws, but the deputy commissioner constituting another committee to visit industrial units with socialmedia teams and later highlighting their visits on social media platforms amounted to harassment of industrialists.
They said they had approached the Hazara commissioner and the Haripur deputy commissioner to stop harassing industrialists, but their requests were not heeded.
The HIA’s office-bearers said skyrocketing petrol and gas prices, heavy taxation, declining exports, and the government’s anti-industrialist attitude had reduced industrial production. Hattar Industrialists, against all odds, are contributing millions of rupees to the national exchequer and providing jobs to thousands of workers, they added.’If the committee is not abolished and harassment of industrialists continues, they would go on strike with their workers,’ theywarned.
The deputy commissioner was not available for comments as he was busy with an online meeting, according to his staff.
On growing complaints of labour law violations, the deputy commissioner constituted an eight-member committee headed by the Khanpur assistant commissioner to conduct a daily survey of all the industries and collect comprehensive data regarding wages being paid to workers and their working hours, process of payment of wages to the workers, registration of workers, par-ticularly women workers, with EOBI and ESSI.
The meeting was informed that some industrialists were not complying with the government’s minimum wage policy and working hours, and in certain cases, workers were being made to work extra hours.
The committee, according to official sources, conducted a couple of visits to the industries last week to gather data, which, however, sparked unrest among industrialists.
Meanwhile, Hazara Labour Federation President Qamar Hayat alleged that industrialists’ protest against the committee formation was to divert attention from the non-implementation of labour laws.