PAKISTAN has a poor record of upholding labour rights, but perhaps nowhere is this more apparent than in the coal mining sector. Horrific news of miners who are buried alive, inhale toxic gases, or get burnt to death inside their places of work surfaces every few months. And yet it seems no action is taken to ensure humane working conditions, or hold owners to account for allowing such conditions to fester. Why else do such incidents keep recurring? Or do the cries of the miners fall on deaf ears? Are their lives inconsequential to those in power? Unfortunately, coal miners are some of the poorest and therefore the most exploited among the workforce. They often work with no safety equipment, receive negligible training, and are afforded few if any public holidays. In 2017, the Pakistan Institute of Labour and Research came up with a comprehensive list of recommendations to ensure basic health and safety standards in the mining sector. Some of the recommendations included: regularising all mines; granting permanent employment status to all miners, including those on contract; providing medical facilities, along with quarterly medical examinations for workers; setting up ventilation systems inside each mine; legislating on the amount of oxygen and temperature inside mines; ratifying ILO conventions and enforcing labour laws; covering mine work under social security and EOBI laws; monitoring methane and coal dust within mines; providing miners with necessary safety equipment; and ensuring miners receive the minimum wage and work no more than eight hours a day. Lastly, in the event of a fatal accident, the families of the victims must be provided compensation within a few days of the tragedy.

But this advice is not followed. Recently, seven miners were killed after yet another explosion ripped through a mine in Balochistan. Can readers imagine what would happen if such an ‘accident’ were to happen in another part of the world? For instance, in Turkey, which itself has a dismal record of ensuring safety for miners, hundreds of protesters took to the streets when 301 people perished in the country’s most disastrous mine-related accident in 2014. A fire that broke out in a mine in Soma raged for two days. The government declared three days of mourning, while grief-stricken families and townspeople demonstrated their anger when the prime minister callously said the situation was ‘normal’. Why do we not witness similar outrage in Pakistan? Perhaps our collective conscience is dead.

Published in Dawn, March 22nd, 2020