ISLAMABAD: The government’s Rs17,500 ($106) per person relief package for daily wage earners is unlikely to be enough to cover the basic needs of the millions who lost their jobs amid cutbacks and shutdowns over the coronavirus crisis, workers and their union representatives say.
The Pakistani government on Monday approved the Rs17,500 monthly cash assistance for around 3 million daily wage earners.
“Something is better than nothing in this critical time, but this amount (17,500 rupees) isn’t enough even for a small family of five members to get by,” Zahoor Awan, secretary general of the Pakistan Workers’ Federation (PWF), told Arab News.
“A small family needs at least 50,000 rupees per month to fulfill all its expenses including house rent, food and utilities,” he said.
The Rs200 billion financial support package is part of the government’s Rs1.2 trillion fiscal stimulus scheme to minimize the adverse impacts of the disease outbreak on the country’s fragile economy.
“It was estimated that around 3 million workers will fall in this category and they will have to be paid a minimum wage of Rs17,500 ($106) per month,” the government’s Economic Coordination Committee said in a statement on Monday.
The government will disburse the money to workers through provincial labor departments.
“This is a substantial and major commitment from the government at this difficult time,” Khurram Husain, business analyst and editor at Dawn daily, told Arab News. But the labor departments, he said, will have to generate “authentic data” on the workers for the funds to be fairly distributed.
There are questions how far the currently used official data reflect reality.
According to PWF, more than a half of the workers will be left out due to the government’s narrow definition of daily wagers.
The government’s package covers only the formal industrial sector, Awan said.
“What about those thousands working in small hotels, shops, self-employed, and others who aren’t registered with labor departments?” he said.
While the ECC estimates that 3 million daily wage workers have been affected by the shutdown of commercial activity across the country, according to Awan the number is at least 7 million.
Ghulam Mustafa, a daily wager at a textile mill in Chakwal, said that prior to the business shutdown his monthly income was Rs26,000.
“It’s impossible to meet all the expenses with Rs17,500,” he told Arab News. “The government should waive off our utility bills along with this allowance.”