Daily Times

The Federal Judicial Academy has arranged a workshop on “International Labour Standards and Labour Dispute Resolution” for Presiding Officers of the Labour Courts and Members, National Industrial Relations Commission.

The workshop was the result of cooperation between the ILO Country Office for Pakistan, through its European Union (EU) funded project ‘Trade for Decent Work’ with the Federal Judicial Academy (FJA), said a press release issued here on Wednesday. As many as 19 presiding officers of the labour courts coming from all provinces of Pakistan, along with two members of the National Industrial Relations Commission (NIRC) participated in the workshop. Supreme Court judge Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah was the chief guest at the concluding ceremony.

Addressing the participants of the workshop, Justice Mansoor said that speedy and fair justice for the workers who were real builders of the nation’s wealth and growth, should be the top most priority of the state.

He desired that the labour court judges being the dispute settlement managers for the most productive organs of the nation should wear a human rights cap and make full use of the whole corpus of the guarantees and the rights articulated in the country’s constitution, national, international and case laws to protect the social, economic and human rights of the workers for industrial peace, rapid economic and social growth in the country.

He maintained that the human resource employed to the labour was 65 million which was approximately 30 percent of the total population of the country but surprisingly there were only 10 thousand cases pending in the labour courts which gave way to two eventualities; either the working environment and rights of the labour were protected resulting into no disputes, or there is lack of awareness of rights and obligations and access to justice is not easy. While referring to the gigantic pendency of the ordinary cases in the courts, he weighed second eventuality as the most likely of the phenomenon, and mentioned lack of awareness of rights and constitutional guarantees to the workers and access to justice as reasons for referral of less disputes to the courts and tribunals.