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India faces criticism at ILO meet

KOCHI: India has come in for criticism at the 97th meeting of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) for violation of international labour provisions, Thampan Thomas, president, Hind Mazdoor Sabha (HMS), has said.

Addressing a press conference here, Mr. Thomas, who had attended the ILO meeting held in Geneva recently, as a delegate from India, said that the report presented by the Director General of ILO accused India of continuing child labour and violation of various ILO conventions accepted by it.

Mr. Thomas said that even 60 years after the 87th convention providing complete organisation freedom and right for collective bargaining to the workers came into being, India had not yet adopted it.He said that the trade unions in India were generally in favour of adopting ILO conventions.

Mr. Thomas said that the 21-day-long meeting at Genevadiscussed various issues, including that of migrant workers, challenges posed by changing weather patterns and implications of trade agreements on non-agricultural products by waving import duty based on the Non-Agricultural Market Access agreement.

He said that HMS would open a help desk to handle the problems of migrant labourers.

He said that the State government should intervene to save the Tatapuram factory owned by Hindustan Unilever.

The factory with 2,000-odd workers in the beginning now had only about 300 of them. As the factory remained non-operational they were denied incentives, which form 60 per cent of their remuneration, he said. He also alleged that of the 56 acres given for the factory only 10 acres remained, as the rest of the land was used for real estate deals.

He urged the government to ensure that the land owned by the factory was utilised for alternative industrial purposes.

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