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Default Privatization at Whose Stake

27th March, 2006
Karachi, Pakistan.

The process of privatization of all sorts of government and semi government organizations started in Pakistan around 1998, and today it is spreading fast and is affecting the lives of many in developing countries around the globe. Various aspects and effects of privatization were discussed by the speakers at a conference entitled "Privatization at Whose Stake" organized by ActionAid Pakistan. The issues of privatization were discussed in relation to the WTO agenda and privatization of services.Mr.Farooq Tariq (APA and Labor Party), Mr.Taimur Rehman (Mazdoor Kissan Tehreek) and Mr. Kaiser Bengali (Economist) spoke on the occasion regarding the economic and political perspectives and the position of workers and civil society organizations. The conference proved to be a first of its kind as representatives from the labor unions and peasant organizations both participated and both joined hands for the struggle against privatization on the platform of World Social Forum.
Mr. Kaiser Bengali stressed that the issue of privatization of land is the most important issue in this regard. Most of our land is owned by government and army in Pakistan. The land should be privatized first if they want to start privatization in the country. So much land is bound by the army and our farmers and peasants are suffering. After the government and army the third monopoly of land owners is that of the big landlords who own large chunks of land in rural areas and the people are dependent on them for their livelihoods. This gives them political power and control over the resources.
During the Zia-ul-Haq regime the landlords were given more power and incentives by introducing contract system. The speakers suggested that if they want to privatize the business institutes the first thing to be privatized should be the land owned by the government and army and then the factories owned by the military.

Mr. Bengali further said that there are no set rules and regulations for privatization of factories in Pakistan.Definate laws are not made for the process of privatization and hence the system is not transparent. Whenever the government privatizes any corporation or organization, every time they give new reasons for privatization which shows that the rules are changed and modified accordingly for every case.
First they started privatization by saying that only those businesses that are not profiteering and are running in loss are being privatized or they said that we do not have sufficient budgets to run the factories thats why these have to be privatized. Another excuse for privatization was that the efficiency of the workers increases when the organization is privatized and the organization starts working more efficiently than before.But the reality is that when they first started privatizing organizations they started from factories that were already running efficiently and were also giving good profits. Today when they privatized PTCL which was a profiteering business they gave the reason that it is not in governments interest to run such a business.
Employment opportunities are very scarce in our country and especially in rural areas and the ratio of unemployment has further increased by privatization of big organizations. All over the country the major businesses and factories are owned by a few families that were the first families to start these businesses right from the time of the British Government. Only a few areas are developed and factories are built in those areas but the poorest communities are not provided any sort of employment opportunities and factories are not set-up in the far flung areas.
Another speaker at the conference pointed out that the worlds largest funding institutions like World Bank and IMF are imposing on us the ideas of privatization and globalization etc, and are propagating that these new schemes are introduced to bring prosperity and development. In reality they want to get a firm hold of our economies and our markets. They want access to our markets and want to control our economies through these huge corporations while they are only providing 3% employment opportunities to the workers. It is alarming that due to privatization 16 billion people are being unemployed around the world. The privatization policies are made on temporary basis and they keep on changing from time to time.
Mr.Taimoor while talking about the international scenario of privatization said that privatization is a kind of a weapon that is being used by the western powers to attack and control the third world countries. He further said that privatization is against the very basic principles of democracy because when an organization is privatized the control is given in the hands of one owner and he is free to decide the fate of any of the employees, as he is not bound by any rules and procedures that were applicable in the organization previously. On the other hand when any organization is the property of the government it means that it is publicly owned and the public has the right to question the efficiency and the methods of operation in that organization.
He said that 2/3 of the world's capital is deposited in only 10 banks and 10 companies have more money than 100 countries in the world. Companies are richer than the countries and governments, as 40% of
International trade only happens between multinational organizations. But the fact is that these corporations only employ 0.05% labor force and are controlling 80% trade around the world.
He concluded by saying that privatization on one hand produces unequal distribution of wealth and concentration of wealth in fewer hands and on the other hand it is an unjust and non-democratic practice which further increases injustice and power politics. He said that this is the time for us to understand the implications of privatizations for the developing nations and to fight against this process and bring about a revolution by rejecting all such unjust systems.
Mr.Farooq Tariq said that the laborers and workers that were previously working in the companies that were privatized were fired overnight without giving any reasons. These workers lost their jobs and were forced to do odd jobs to run their livelihoods.
Another form of privatization came as the schemes such as the Golden Shake-hand scheme was introduced, according to which the employees were asked to volunteer and leave their jobs and as compensation those who volunteer will get 24 salaries at once. The people were highly misguided by some of the leaders of the workers unions and they chose to leave their jobs against the golden shake-hand scheme. Research shows that 80% of the people who got golden shake-hand are now jobless.
He concluded the conference by saying that today we are here to create alliances of farmers and laborers and to device a clear strategy for revolution and change. We demand that the industries that are being denationalized should be renationalized and the land to be distributed among the farmers.
The conference was followed by a combined rally of laborers, farmers as well as the representatives of various civil society organizations. The crowd shouted slogans against privatization and the unjust government policies as well as against the western powers that are responsible for these discriminatory schemes.


Regards,
Sardarzada
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