Stop Privatisation

 

The process of privatisation of state industries in Pakistan, as a result of the pressures of imperialism, is having devastating effects for the workers: redundancies, decrease in wages and longer working hours.

The state expects to get hard cash income to overcome its difficulties and reduce the budget deficit. The excuse they are using to justify  privatisations is that they are running in deficit. But as one trade union leader in the Thata cement factory, where workers are resisting privatisation, said “our factory is not running in deficit, why they want to privatise it?”.

They are trying to convince the workers of these industrial units to buy the shares of their factories to make them owners.

They have already privatised electricity, cement factories, Millat tractors, Allied Bank of Pakistan and Muslim Commercial Bank (now UBL and HBL), steel sector, engineering factories, cooking oil mills, and partially railways, buses and Pakistan Telecommunications, among others.

The target of the government was to privatise 72 industrial units to get 15 billion rupees, until now they have achieved to get 5 billion rupees by selling some of them. This amount is negligible if we take in account the 150 billion budget deficit.

Rana Sikander Ali