ISLAMABAD: Labour law experts and representatives of multinational employers came together to discuss ways to improve wages and protection for labour, in a roundtable discussion on ‘Living Wage for a Sustainable Pakistan: Bridging Gaps, Building Equity’.

The roundtable was part of the Sustainable Development Conference (SDC) being held here Monday through Thursday.

The session opened with Dr Shafqat Munir Ahmad from Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) sharing the living wage statistics from Pakistan.

In Pakistan, the minimum living wage ranges from Rs36,000 to Rs38,000 – Sindh being the highest, then Islamabad followed by the rest of the country.

“The people getting minimum wage, especially those who work on daily wages, are not given any other facility such as health insurance etc. and are also punished by deductions when they take sick leaves or do not perform up to the mark, which means that they are not even getting the minimum wage,” Dr Munir said.

He added that this situation in Pakistan was not due to lack of regulation or government policies.

“Not only we have signed the international agreements with the ILO but we also have labour laws, ministries, and forums for addressal,” he added.

Rather, he said, the problem stems from the fact that a massive economic portion in Pakistan was in the informal sector, which means that despite the existence of laws, their enforcement falls short.

Moreover, even if the employers pay the minimum wage, it is considerably lower than the living wage, according to the economic situation in Pakistan.

Fatima Arshad from Unilever gave a presentation on labour and wages, concurring to Dr Shafqat’s remarks.

One notable point she made was that if the labour is protected and the minimum wages are at par with the living wages, that not only leads to better employee retention and satisfaction but may also add trillions in the global GDP.

She also highlighted that the gap between living wage and minimum wage in Pakistan was Rs25,000.

Dr Asad Sayeed from Collective for Social Science Research Karachi added to the debate, focusing on the agricultural sector, said the informal sector was two-thirds, if not more of the agricultural sector.

“And it is imperative to bring it into the fold of formal regulated sector to close the gap between the minimum wage and living wage. Another way to reduce this gap is through social protection,” Dr Sayeed said, adding that he would talk about “reservation wage” which he defined as the minimum wage at which people were willing to offer their services.

According to some estimates, this reservation wage or floor wage in Pakistan is Rs27,000 and our estimates of living wage are approximately Rs55,000, Dr Sayeed said.

Dr Sebastian Paust from the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany said that the EU is one of the biggest trade partners of Pakistan.

“I have to regrettably say that the implementation of the conventions of the GSP+ status by Pakistan is dissatisfactory,” he said, adding that “if this is not managed in the future, Pakistan, at least in the medium term is at the risk of losing the preferential tariff”.

But, Dr Paust said, this was only one of the metrics.

“There are also supply chain laws, which apply to the social aspects of labour treatment, he said, adding that “living wage is part of that”.

“Honestly, I don’t see the sense in the gap between the minimum wage and the living wage, the living wage has to be the minimum wage,” he added.

He said living wage is to avoid social unrest and to check crime rate, and we can see how the crime rate of Pakistan is going up.

Talking about the appropriate methods to determine minimum wage in Pakistan, Dr Azfar Khan from Anker Research Institute (ARI) said that the strategies and framework used to determine the minimum wages should be constantly updated with the changing inflation trends in Pakistan.

Shedding light on the challenges that Pakistan faces in implementing labour laws, labour law expert from CLR Iftikhar Ahmad said that in Pakistan one labour inspector was responsible for nearly 160,000 people.

“Pakistan should make it easier for them to do their job, increase their mobility and also makes it easier for labour to file complaints, for example though online forums,” he said, adding that “the number of labour inspectors also need to be increased”.

Founder and CEO of Rozee.pk Monis Rahman spoke on the rapid digitisation and how the AI holds the power to not only make unskilled jobs obsolete, but also allow fewer employees to do the work of a lot more people.

“We should start training our employees at all levels in modern technologies to improve their skill levels,” he said.