Dark Satanic Mills

Faisalabad, April 2

Faisalabad is described as the “Manchester of Pakistan”. This is not a reference to a groovy indie music scene but to a textile industry. Pakistan is today the world's second biggest textile exporter after China. The factories are like something Engels described in Manchester when he wrote The Condition of the Working Class in England a century and a half ago, complete with child labour (for example the worker on the left in the photo below). The factory owners are not unchallenged, however, the Labour Qaumi Movement (LQM) offering an inspiring example of worker's self-organisation in all 14 sectors of Faisalabad. (More on the LQM later.)

More photos of various factories in the Gulum Mohamed Abad sector of Faisalabad:

 

The air is almost unbreathable due to a moist, warm, strange-smelling cloud of cotton dust causing poor visibility and horrific respitory illnesses in the workers. (This also got into my camera lens, leading to the white bubbles in many of the pictures).

To cut costs, employers take a casual atttude to their factories’ electricity supply, with crazy wiring, with no circuit-breakers, leading to frequent electrocution of workers:

But showing exactly where the factory owners’ priorities lie, surveillance cameras, to make sure the workers are working as hard and fast as the bosses want them to, are up to 21st century standards:

Heavy lifting:

Mohamed Rafiq, general secretary of the Gulum Mohamed Abad sector LQM, shows workers’ drinking water supply. It is infested with dengue fever-causing mosquitoes:

 “Bathroom” facilities: