Fight For Living Wage

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31946, 25 March 1969, Page 15

Fight For Living Wage

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright)

KARACHI, March 24. The future of Pakistan seems to lie to some extent on the narrow shoulders of a tiny 86-year-old Bengali, Mr Maulana Abdul Hamil Khan Bhashani, reports Granville Watts of the Asociated Press. Watts writes:

Despite genuine reforms already introduced by President Ayub’s Government and others promised, Mr Bhashani, who is regarded as almost a saint by the teeming peasant millions of East Pakistan, says he will settle only for a complete social and economic change that gives workers a liveable minimum wage of 150 rupees (29 dollars) a month.

The average worker’s wage is half, or less than half, that amount Mr Bhashani, leader of the National Awami Party, also wants peasants’ land cooperatives along the lines he saw during a visit to China as a guest of Mao Tse-tung in 1963.

The Government and most other opposition leaders have been hoping that concessions already granted and the appointment of a Bengali economist, Dr Syed Huda, as Governor of East Pakistan would help cool down the wave of mob violence and killings which has been sweeping the countryside and towns of the East. But Mr Bhashani, who seems to be the only man the peasants will listen to, is unlikely to call off the present pressure unless the Government comes over with physical offers of what his people want.

“We have had promises for the last 20 years but the fact is the peasants are now worse off than when the British ruled here,” Mr Bhashani said in a recent interview. On indication of Mr Bhashani’s influence is shown by the fact that the other major East Pakistan leader—Sheik Mujibur Rehamn—-has now added the issues of a worker’s minimum wage and a better deal for the peasants to his political platform. Sheik Mujibur is the Right-wing leader of the Awami League Party which has its following mainly in

the cities and towns of East Pakistan.

Industrial unrest and political clashes have diminished during the last week in the Western region where the standard of living is much higher than in the East. Left to itself, the Western province—which also got a new governor, a local industrialist, Mr Yusuf Haroon, last week—might return to normal quickly. President Ayub’s Government is to present a bill to the National Assembly next month changing the Constitution to provide for free adult franchise elections on a nation-wide scale, and a Federal Parliamentary form of Government. The Government also said the East and West provinces would be completely autonomous and the central government would deal only with defence, foreign affairs and possibly taxation.

The 70 million Easterners, however, make up the majority of Pakistan’s 120 million population and they are pressing for proportional representation in the central government. This would give the easterners the biggest say in the nation’s affairs for the first time in its 21-year history.

Autonomy on this basis is enough for some Easterners, but complete peace is unlikely to return to the East until Mr Bhashani’s peasants’ and workers' demands are met.

“Our demands are modest —we are only asking for a liveable wage. We have waited long enough,” Mr Bhashani says.