KARACHI: The leaders of the business community have asked the government to give details about millions of rupees being collected each year on account of Workers’ Profit Participation Fund (WPPF). The fund was aimed at developing welfare projects like schools, housing colonies and health centres for business and industrial workers. Lasbela Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) President Ismail Suttar, while drawing the attention towards the plight of workers, urged the federal and provincial governments to investigate into the unaccounted funds of the WPPF, which could have improved the lives of workers if used properly. The WPPF was established in late sixties to acknowledge the participation of the workers in making their company profitable and to share with them a portion of those profits as a reward and incentive for enhancing productivity. According to the Companies Profits (Workers’ Participation) Act, 1968, business entities contribute five percent of their pre-tax profits yearly to the fund to give social cover to workers drawing minimum wages. According to the act, an individual worker gets 25 percent of the fund and the rest goes to the government to be utilised for welfare projects for workers. However, the Pakistan Economic Survey of the previous fiscal year failed to disclose the amount collected under the head of WPPF, Ismail said. Consequently, the major portion of the fund that ends up with the government has not yielded any satisfactory results, he added. All this is going on as nearly 39 percent of Pakistanis live in poverty and the gap in availability and utilisation of resources between the affluent and the poor is widening day by day, he said. “The business and industry has the right to question where the fund is going, who benefits from it and why it has been left unchecked for so long that hardly anybody even questions about it,” he added.