Rs25,000 minimum wage in accordance with law: Saeed Ghani

KARACHI: Sindh Education and Labour Minister Saeed Ghani has said the Sindh government has duly exercised its power to notify Rs25,000 as the minimum monthly wage for labourers in the province.

Talking to The News on Wednesday, Ghani completely negated the impression that the Sindh government had not completed due procedure as prescribed in the Sindh Minimum Wages Act-2015 while notifying the latest minimum wage for labourers. He clarified that it was basically the prerogative of the provincial government/cabinet to decide the minimum wage for workers in the province.

The minister said that the Sindh Minimum Wages Board was only supposed to give its recommendation to the provincial government as the cabinet takes the final decision in this regard. He said the provincial Minimum Wages’ Board had recommended Rs19,000 as minimum wage for labourers in the province but the cabinet after due consideration had decided to enhance the minimum salary for labourers to Rs25,000.

Ghani said that in the past too, the provincial government had to face problems in getting the minimum salary implemented when it was like Rs16,000 or Rs17,000 per month.

He said that this time again, the Sindh government would use its authority to get the minimum wage implemented by the industry and it would take action against the employers who would not adopt the revised salary.

“The most important thing is that the Sindh cabinet this time has decided to increase minimum wage to 25,000 in accordance with the increase in value of dollar. The latest minimum wage shows that labourers here will be paid around least 160 US dollars monthly salary,” he said.

To a question, the minister said there was no legal issue that there should be uniform monthly salary for the entire country as it was primarily a provincial subject.

However, President of the Korangi Association of Trade and Industry, Saleemuz Zaman, who is also a member of Sindh Minimum Wages Board, said the new monthly minimum salary was completely unacceptable to the industry. “We have serious reservations against the freshly notified salary as we are weighing a number of options to proceed against the latest decision,” he said.

The KATI president said the Sindh government had not gone through the due process as prescribed in the Sindh Minimum Wages Act to notify the revised minimum salary. The provincial Minimum Wages Board earlier duly considered the issue and made a decision with consensus to raise minimum monthly salary to Rs19,000 as this recommendation should have been duly notified by the government instead of prescribing Rs25,000 as the monthly salary, the KATI president added.

He said the Sindh government had not earlier forwarded its recommendation of Rs25,000 monthly wage to the provincial Minimum Wages Board for due consideration as prescribed in the law.