Daily Times

LAHORE: The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has expressed grave concern over the recent deaths of 29 workers in Balochistan.

On Friday, six migrant workers involved in installing a mobile phone tower in Kharan were killed by assailants who attacked their camp as they slept.

During Saturday and Sunday, 23 colliers were killed in two separate mining accidents—a methane explosion in a mine in Marwar and a mudslide in another mine in Sooranj, which left several miners fatally trapped.

“It is unacceptable that workers are not provided adequate security in regions known to be politically sensitive and thus vulnerable to such attacks. The responsibility for protecting workers in such a situation lies squarely with their employers, who must take all possible steps to ensure that their operations in any given area do not put workers at unnecessary risk. Where this risk exists, employers are bound to provide their workers with regular and adequate security. Moreover, mining accidents such as methane explosions and cave-ins may be preventable if the correct occupational health and safety procedures and mechanisms are implemented early on. In what is a physically grueling occupation in even the best of conditions, miners’ lives cannot be treated as dispensable. This implies that creating and sustaining conditions of decent work—for which both the state and employers are legally responsible—is as important as creating work in the first instance,” HRCP stated.

The HRCP has also urged the state and the employers concerned to ensure that the workers’ beneficiaries are, in both cases, compensated fairly.

Published in Daily Times, May 8^th 2018.