LAHORE: Trade union leaders, rights activists and workers have demanded socioeconomic rights for the working class in the wake of Covid-19 pandemic.

At a webinar on Covid-19 and Protection of Health and Jobs of Workers held to mark the International Workers Day, rights activist Hina Jilani lamented that right to health as well as others socioeconomic rights had not been made a part of the fundamental rights of the citizens in the Constitution.

The event was organised by the Progressive Labour Federation, in collaboration with the Labour Education Foundation, Progressive Students Collective and Haqooq-i-Khalq Movement (HKM). Khalid Malik moderated it.

Ms Jilani demanded including these socioeconomic rights into the Constitution’s chapter dealing with fundamental rights and extending social security cover not only to industrial labourers but also workers in informal sector and farms.

She regretted that the citizens were being given their economic right as a charity (a reference to the government’s Ehsaas programme), hurting their dignity. She said had there been strong local governments equipped with resources, there would have been visible difference in handling the crisis.

The HKM’s Ammar Ali Jan said the pandemic had brought the workers to the point of fight for survival. He said the incumbent exploitative system was successfully using the workers against workers by dividing them. He called for assembling the workers on a single platform for waging a struggle for rights so that there’s no daily-wager and/or contractual employee and every workers was employed as regular enjoying all legal rights.

Pakistan Kissan Rabita Committee’s Farooq Tariq demanded that the health system should be free at all levels and all the time and raising allocations for the sector up to 10pc of the budget.

He said the capitalist governments across the world were allocating taxpayers’ money to bail out big businesses and offering peanuts to the deserving poor.

He was also critical of religious take on the pandemic, saying it was aimed at diverting public attention from ineptness of the government.

Psychologist Prof Maqbool Babri suggested introducing unified health and education systems in the country by making all those drawing their salaries from tax-payers’ money to be treated in case of ailment only at state-run health facilities and educating their children at state-run schools.

Pakistan Workers Confederation leader Khurshid Ahmed regretted that at retirement the workers were denied medical facility when they needed more healthcare.

Representing transgender persons, Zanaya Chaudhry bemoaned that at a time when events had been banned, her community has been left with the Hobson’s choice of begging on roads but law enforcers were barring them in the wake of coronavirus without offering them any alternative. She said those employed at some businesses were facing the worst sexual harassment.

Manzoor Cheema from the US, Mushtaq Lasharie from London, Aslam Meraj from Faisalabad, Tajmeena from Charsadda and other people from across the country also participated.

Published in Dawn, May 2nd, 2020