KARACHI: Sindh Minister for Labour Saeed Ghani Saeed Ghani has said the provincial government stands with the retrenched Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM) workers and will raise the issue in parliament.
While talking to a delegation of the sacked PSM employees who called on him on Wednesday, the minister condemned the government’s decision of retrenchment of the workers.
He said, “We will deliver the sacked employees’ demands to the federal government and if the government refused to accept these demands, the workers have every right to protest.” “People’s Party’s manifesto is to provide employment and not sacking people from jobs,” Saeed Ghani added.
The minister further said the provincial government will form a committee to resolve the problems of the retrenched employees of Pakistan Steel.
He said a PSM worker had lost his life the other day because he could not survive the tragedy of retrenchment. He said nobody can deny the link between the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and the PSM.
The PPP leader said PTI Minister Asad Umar should deliver on his promises to the PSM employees before coming to power.
He said PM Imran Khan had promised to give 10 million jobs to people across the country, however, in reality; the employees of his own government had been forced to hold protests.
Sacked employees of Pakistan Steel called off their protest and left the blocked main railway track near Bin Qasim yesterday, which had suspended the railway traffic for many hours.
Earlier, more than 4,500 employees of the Pakistan Steel Mills were fired after an emergency meeting chaired by the organization’s chief executive officer.
The spokesman of PSM said the employees belonging to category 2,3, and 4 pay groups had been dismissed from their jobs and that dismissal letters had been sent via post to all those impacted.
The federal government had already approved the retrenchment of all the 9,350 remaining employees of the PSM with a one-time severance cost of about Rs20 billion in June.
