On November 4, an estimated 250 workers were producing plastic bags inside Rajput Polyester Factory when the building collapsed near Lahore, Pakistan. The official death toll is 45 workers. The rest are wounded or still trapped under the debris.
Majority of these workers are teenage or young adult men from farther districts who work for about $120 a month. Many live or sleep in the factory. The factory continued to function after it took a hit from last month’s earthquake.
The politicians and bureaucrats are running slow rescue missions and phony investigations. The working class doesn’t need a verdict to know who’s guilty: these factory bosses and the imperialists they serve.
Whenever a disaster hits, be it blatantly capitalist like a factory collapse or caused by capitalism like Hurricane Katrina, the working-class never recovers from those conditions. Years after the garment factory collapse at Bangladesh’s Rana Plaza that murdered over 1,133 people, the conditions are still death traps. Months after the chemical explosion in Tianjin, China, many are still searching for jobs and homes.
Imperialist Rivalry in Pakistan Intensifies
The workers in Lahore, like workers everywhere, suffer one capitalist attack after another. Last year, a mosque collapsed, killing over 200. The year before that, massive floods forced masses to flee their homes. The second attack on workers in Pakistan comes in the form of imperialist rivalry. There is no excuse but capitalism for a country that can accept a $46 billion investment deal with China to build the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor but can’t invest in infrastructure?
For the bosses, be it in China, Pakistan, or the United States, their top priority is oil profits, not workers’ blood. On November 11, Pakistan handing over 2,300 acres of land in its poorest province, Baluchistan, in a 43-year tax-exempt lease to China. This move will build a network of transportation for oil and gas, connecting China directly to the Arabian Sea. As Challenge goes to press, China has taken official control of Pakistan’s Gwadar port, which, lying next to the Strait of Hormuz, is a key gateway to oil-exporting Gulf countries. This means a challenge to imperialist rival, United States. For the working class in Pakistan, it means ratcheting up exploitation, displacement if their homes are “in the way” of the economic corridor, and war.
Bury the Bosses
What should our response be to this factory collapse and economic corridor? Bury the bosses and their killer profit wars. Progressive Labor Party must respond to this attack on the working class with mass fightback. From Pakistan to Colombia to Haiti, PLP fights with and serves the working class. Comrades everywhere must raise this attack on workers in Pakistan at their local unions, jobs, hospitals, schools, and unemployment offices. Be it in the Professional Staff Congress, the Unitarian Church, or in the streets during a Challenge sale, raise international solidarity with workers in Pakistan!