Published in Dawn, April 11th, 2023
The melancholy of having to count souls/ Where they grow fewer and fewer every year. — Census Taker by Robert Frost
THE poem published in 1923 by the American poet captures the solitude of the locale, of diminishing life as farmers left the New England region in droves and headed to the cities in the early 20th century. What have the census takers in Karachi in 2023 felt while counting the people? By all accounts, it was exasperation.
Continue readingPublished in Dawn, March 18th, 2023
THREE years have gone by since the WHO declared the Covid-19 outbreak a pandemic on March 11, 2020. Termed as the world’s most serious humanitarian crisis since World War II, it is still being debated whether the pandemic is over or not as new infections and deaths occur in a number of countries. By February 2023, 6.8 million people had died. Besides, hundreds of millions of people lost jobs globally, millions saw their salaries cut or work hours reduced. Most countries have not yet returned to the levels of employment and hours worked before the outbreak. According to an ILO report, informality and working poverty have risen further with the Covid-19 crisis.
Continue readingPublished in Dawn, March 4th, 2023
NATURAL gas has played a major role in Pakistan’s energy matrix since the first large reserve was discovered in Sui, Balochistan, in 1952. Significant gas fields of smaller sizes were discovered subsequently and made operational in the provinces, particularly Sindh where the gas reserve at Mari was discovered in 1956, and the Qadirpur and Miano gas fields in the 1990s. Since then, exploration, discoveries and oil and gas production have continued.
Oil and gas extraction requires huge capital, sophisticated technology and highly skilled labour. The first beneficiaries are thus the investors — operating companies and management (national or global corporations).
Continue readingPublished in Dawn, December 30th, 2022
WHILE the global textile and apparel industry is in the process of moving into total digital transformation, Pakistani industry is struggling with basic workplace safety issues. So how can the Pakistan Accord on Health and Safety in the Textile and Garment Industry be a game changer? Precisely because a sound infrastructure is the edifice the industry — any industry, especially a labour-intensive industry — is built upon. If the entire industry endorses, owns and implements the Accord, which is to be launched in January 2023, it can trigger a process of change for the better.
Continue readingPublished in Dawn, August 13th, 2022
TRADE unions invariably grow from the political system in a country. The structural nature of a country’s political system deeply influences trade union membership, coverage and impact. Primarily, it is the internal political system of a country that gives or curtails space to trade unions to either institutionalise and become stronger, or remain fragmented and marginalised. The impact of external, or global, factors is secondary, though crucial.
Continue readingPublished in Dawn, May 1st, 2022.
“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.” — Albert Einstein
THE Covid-19 pandemic, which destroyed the livelihoods of billions of workers, exposed the widening inequity in the world between the rich and poor as never before. An important lesson to emerge in the aftermath is the need for a “just transition into the future” and the need to go “towards a more protected and empowered workforce” as was said in a recent ILO report. This lesson may not have been grasped yet by the employers and workers in our country, but it has created a ripple in the world of work at large. Let us hope our employers, labour unions and state officials realise these needs, if not today, then tomorrow.
Continue readingPublished in Dawn, November 21st, 2021
ONCE upon a time, Karachi’s Shaheed-i-Millat Road comprised two narrow and uneven metalled roads, with a dirt-and-dust field in between. It looked vast to us children who crossed it every day to reach school, a 15-minute walk from home. Serving a number of peaceful neighbourhoods, the artery connecting Sharea Faisal with Jail Chowrangi was later developed into a double-track shahrah with a green median strip, service lanes and traffic signals at six chowrangis. Plant nurseries sprang up on the sides. For decades Shaheed-i-Millat Road was a delight for the eyes, despite its drastic land-use change from residential to commercial.
Continue readingPublished in Dawn, October 27th, 2021.
The Nobel Prize for Economics for the year 2021 awarded to David Card for his contributions to scholarship on minimum wages has vindicated trade unions, labour and human rights advocates and pro-labour economists the world over. Card’s work in 1994 refuted the long-held hypothesis that increases in minimum wage reduces employment. At the time, 90 per cent of professional economists believed that a hike in minimum wage was bad for the economy. In Myth and Measurement: The New Economics of the Minimum Wage, Card and Alan Krueger presented evidence that minimum wage hike has either no effect or a positive effect on employment.
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Zeenat Hisam 