KARACHI: Families of those died in industrial fires and activists championing the cause of labour rights have expressed serious concern over the alarming increase in incidents of fires in factories and asked the government to take immediate measures to ensure industrial safety and occupational health across Sindh.

The recent fires in factories and workplaces in which a number of workers trapped and died put a question mark on the government`s repeated claims that laws would either be improved or better implementation on the existing laws would be made to save human life from such disasters.

Saeeda Khatoon, who lost her only son in the 2012 Baldia factory fire incident and now heads the body of the families of the victims, said that factory owners, the provincial government and its departments responsible for implementing labour laws should be directly blamed for non-implementation of the laws in industries.

`They have not learnt a lesson from the tragedies we have seen at Baldia factory and Gadani ship-breaking yard recently,` she said, adding that the mandatorylabourinspectionwassuspended for ages and officials in the departments concerned were busy in `filling up their pockets`.

Nasir Mansoor, deputy secretary gen-eral of the National Trade Union Federation (NTUF), said three workers died in Ibrahim Hyderi in a fire while another worker died in a fire broke out in a PECHS warehouse. Besides, he added, a number of other workers sustained serious wounds in those or similar incidents reporte d lately.

He said this year the Sindh government had designated September 11, the day when a huge fire in Baldia factory broke out five years ago, as the health safety day, yet solid measures to ensure occupational safety in factories were still a far cry from modern standards.

He said the fire department should be better equipped as its limited capacity caused prolonged delays in putting out fires.

Zohra Khan, secretary general of the home-based women workers federation, demanded that a minimum of Rs3 million compensation be paid to every fam11y of those died in the recent fires, while Rs1.5m be paid to those who were burnt or wounded.

The Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (Piler) also demanded the government to take measures to ensure occupational health and safety at workplaces.

Karamat Ali, who heads the institute, said a number of incidents of fires in factories and buildings had been reported and in other incidents workers had lost their lives in industrial accidents.

Last week, he added, a poor worker died in a blast at a cosmetics factory inthe Sharea Faisal area and several others were injured.

He claimed the police were trying to manipulate the facts related to the cause of the blast as happened in many cases in the past.

Recently, a fire broke out in a multi-storey building of a franchise restaurant in Clifton, destroying three stories of the building. In another incident a third-degree fire erupted at a cardboard warehouse near Shafiq Mor in Karachi.

Rights activists said a provincial law on occupational health and safety in Sindh was drafted a couple of years ago but still pending before the authorities concerns for their approval.

He said Pakistan had ratified C-81 on Labour Inspection in 1953 but due to weaker labour inspection system factory owners were not complying with the health and safety standards.

In July 2015, the ILO and Netherlands signed an agreement to strengthen labour inspection system in Pakistan in relation to the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP Plus), which was awarded to Pakistan by the European Commission in January 2014.

Under the GSP Plus scheme the country that obtains the GSP plus status has to sign and implement 27 internationalconventionsincluding16 conventions related to labour compliance and 11 others related to human rights, good governance and environmental protection.