Daily Times

Pakistan in 1969 was a place that many of us living here today would probably not have recognised. The streets were awash with people who had decided to stop bearing oppression within their workplaces, stop talking about the problems of the country while sipping tea in their drawing rooms, stop pointing fingers while doing nothing themselves and instead, to take matters into their own hands. While the movement that emerged to bring down the regime of General Muhammad Ayub Khan can be analysed and critiqued from many different angles, it was this movement that became the precursor to the first free and fair elections held in Pakistan and it was this movement that brought Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) into power.

It appears, however, that the PPP in government today has forgotten these same people. The workers of Kot Lakhpat who played such a seminal role in this movement are today being maltreated and ignored as they struggle to ask for one simple right — their pension. Today, they are old men and women who are struggling to exist in a state that does not have adequate social security provisions. When they talk about their past and their hopes for the future of this country, they do so with a twinkle in their eye. Yet their hard earned and proudly worn wrinkles earn them no respect.

As I sat speaking to a meeting of these workers in what they called their “labour hall” (a room where seating was provided by a number of charpoys arranged haphazardly side by side), the electricity came and went intermittently. The heat of the sun came in sticky waves through the open door. They talked about the air-conditioning that is always on in the offices of the Workers Welfare Fund, how the officers that work there and deal with them have the luxury of driving around in cars.

A man sat behind me with one thin leg up on the charpoy. He had a red and white cloth tied around a head full of white hair. He talked of how the factory that he used to work in has closed down. Yet when he went to ask for his pension, he was told to get a service certificate from the factory. He told them he has a registration card but they claim they cannot use it to find his records. He will have to track down someone who can make him a service certificate from a factory that no longer exists. After 1977 when privatisation was carried out in a more systematic manner, many such factories closed down and therefore, this worker is not representative of an individual problem, but is an example of a problem that is faced by many who find themselves in a similar position.

We are not here talking about people who can jauntily hop onto their cars or cycles and go door to door asking for their old factory employers. Indeed, if this was the case, it would defeat the purpose of having old age benefits at all. One should actually not find this very surprising, as it is in keeping with the fact that the Employers Old Age Benefits Institution (EOBI) in practice is defeating the purpose of having legally binding pension schemes.

The EOBI is the federal body that is entrusted with the charge of providing age, disability and survivors’ pensions. As such, it is the institution in charge of making sure that those who have done service for most of their lives are taken care of when they reach a certain age. That retirement age was recently revised so that it was fixed at 60 years for men and 55 years for women. However, the workers of one leading factory were retired at the age of 58. While this retirement was not of their own volition and was in breach of what was legally decided, it still affects the amount of pension they are now entitled to get. The legal cut, for this illegal act, is 1.5 percent. However, 12 percent is actually being deducted.

Furthermore, a common complaint of these labourers is that they are not treated well at the banks and institutions that they go to in order to ask for what is their legal right. Alongside the EOBI, the Workers Welfare Fund is a body that was formed under the separate Workers Welfare Ordinance of 1972. This body is in charge of provision of plots, housing, providing education to these workers’ children and so on. While this looks rather attractive on paper, the red tape and multiple cuts that these schemes face mean that these retired workers see a very limited amount of what they are actually entitled to.

Revisions in the relevant ordinances and bureaucratic red tape should not be preventing these entitlements from finding their rightful owners. For instance, for many of those workers initially registered under pension schemes, the required contribution to be entitled to receive pension was seven years of service. This was later revised and made into 15 years of secure service. While all these revisions may, in theory, have been part of an attempt to streamline the process, they have in practice ended up obfuscating the actual allocation of the rightfully due pension.

If not on a larger political front, can we not plead to each other? The things we are taught while growing up — to respect our elders, to take care of our parents as they grow older — this is the time when those ideals and lessons are being tested. We can talk ad infinitum about the problems in the country and the myriad possible solutions to them but sometimes, as in this case, we can actually contribute to making a small difference. You do not have to go out onto the streets to make this difference. Sign a petition, call the EOBI, spread the word. Without even leaving your homes, you can be part of helping these inspirational elderly workers get their legal rights.

The writer is a PhD candidate in the history department at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She can be reached at malik.anushay@gmail.com