CLEARLY the country’s worst industrial disaster, the factory blaze in Karachi will be seared in memory as the Pakistani worker’s 9/11. Like the factory fire that struck Lahore on the same day killing over 20 people, it had long been building up in the casinos of government officials who make their fortune gambling on the lives of the hapless millions. The tragedy that began to unfold on Tuesday has taken the entire country in an asphyxiating grip of grief mixed with rage. Questions, though belated, are being asked about the non-implementation of safety standards and the massive corruption in government ranks which led to such flagrant violations of the law. These questions must also be put to all departments concerned — whether labour, industries or local and provincial administrations — and responsibility affixed for the catastrophe. Compensation too must be given to the families of the dead or injured, many of them the sole breadwinners for old parents and children in a society where poverty has struck deep roots.

With this tragedy, it has become imperative for all factories in the country to undergo regular inspections and a thorough cleanup. Anything short of that will be an insult to the hundreds who over the years have paid with their lives for a system that is rotten to the core. Changing the system will be a challenge to stranded workers looking for an exit from the virtual hell that still must erupt into an inferno to get noticed — a challenge which others in civil society must help the workers take on.

Factories in Pakistan are kingdoms unto themselves. They are concentration camps where workers are denied their basic rights enshrined in the constitution, in the country’s labour laws and in international conventions. Even a proper appointment letter is more often than not a favour, and not a rule, and those who are not employed as per the regulations have no claim to privileges, not even compensation in accident cases. Trade unions are a luxury which can hurt the owners’ interests. The government promises to reinvigorate them but is either too meek or too overwhelmed by petty profits to even try and implement the existing law. The presence of unions could have ensured better working conditions — more fire exits at least — for those lost forever in the industrial holes in Karachi and Lahore. But then recent anti-terrorism cases against workers in Faisalabad and Karachi spell out just how difficult it is to even demand something as basic as a union. This betrays a flawed policy and must change. Organised, active unions are the first and vital defence against greedy employers and their equally selfish partners in government. Allowed enabling space, these organised workers could ultimately provide the country with the forward-looking front so desperately needed.