Pakistan Garment Workers Fight For Rights Amid Covid-19 Pandemic
Even though the pandemic has the whole sitting at home, in Karachi, Pakistan, last week, the police had “allegedly” started shooting on a crowd of hundreds of garment workers. These workers were unarmed and protested right outside of a factory that is a denim cloth supplier for many international fashion brands.
The workers of the said factory claim that the police had charged on them with batons when they were outside the factory protesting against the owners who have fired a minimum of 15,000 workers amid and since the start of the pandemic, a man named Nasir Mansoor who belongs in the National Trade Union Federation also said that a lot of workers were laid-off even without receiving written notice or anything of the sort. When the police arrived at the sight of the protest, the workers were shouting various and demanding that there be better conditions in the work environment and their wages.
The workers are very close to despair as most of them are rural migrant workers who have been left stranded without any closure. These workers are working with the constant fear of losing their job and also the cancellation of the holiday bonus, which the workers use to travel home for the Islamic holiday Eid.
The problem of the unjust and forced lay-offs is not something that only this factory’s workers have to face, but also on Pakistan. The workers have been living their lives hand-to-mouth as most of them said that they hadn’t received any wages since March of this year.