PM Imran calls for global joint strategy to 'soften the impact' on labourers worldwide.

ISLAMABAD -- Prime Minister Imran Khan delivered a keynote address at a special session of the International Labour Organization (ILO) and stressed that a joint strategy is needed to protect the labour class, Dunya News reported on Wednesday.

The premier said, '[During the COVID-19 lockdown] we did not stop any workers in the agricultural area because of course then we would have had a huge food crisis. Construction activity which employs most amount of workers in our cities, we opened it up fairly quickly.

'On top of it, we decided that we needed to transfer cash to this informal part of our labour, which there was no registration. Those who were registered, we asked the employers to keep them employed, we compensated for them.

'The ones who weren't registered, we set up the system of people registering with our Ehsaas programme through which we distributed money. We had desks everywhere, people were registering there, we had them checked.

'In Pakistan's history, never was so much money transferred to so many people in such a short space of time. That saved us from some of the worst aspects of the lockdown.

'For instance we saw what was happening in India. India did the opposite. They went for a curfew almost and they had huge problems. Millions and millions of migrant workers were just left stranded. Because of this very strict lockdown, their poverty rates are gone up.

'Having said this, the future is very uncertain. We don't know how long the economy will take to recover from the impact of this lockdown. No one is sure right now where we are headed.

'We are all prying some vaccine comes out as a cure to this virus but in the meantime this uncertainty prevails.

'The most vulnerable section of our society remains our labour, and that's why the summit is extremely important. We need to share...