Minimum Wages Ordinance, 1961

The Minimum Wages Ordinance, 1961 set up a system for fixing minimum wages for workers in certain industrial undertakings across Pakistan. Section 2 excludes several categories from its protection, including Federal and Provincial Government employees, coal miners (covered under a separate ordinance), and agricultural workers.

Each Provincial Government is required to establish a Minimum Wages Board made up of a Chairman, an independent member, and one representative each for employers and workers in the province, with two additional industry-specific representatives added when the Board is dealing with a particular industry (Section 3). The Board can recommend minimum wage rates for unskilled and juvenile workers generally (Section 4), or for workers in a specific industry where no adequate wage-setting machinery already exists (Section 5), including separate rates for time work, piece work, overtime, and holiday work.

Once the Board makes a recommendation, the Provincial Government can either declare it the official minimum wage by Gazette notification, or send it back to the Board for reconsideration if it seems unfair to either employers or workers (Section 6). These declared rates must be reviewed periodically -- generally not sooner than one year and not later than three years after being set (Section 7).

The core protection is in Section 9: an employer may not pay a covered worker less than the declared minimum wage. An employer who does so can be punished with imprisonment for up to six months, a fine of up to five hundred rupees, or both, and the court can also order the employer to pay the worker the wage difference they were shortchanged. Only a Magistrate of the first class or higher can hear such a case, and only on a written complaint from the Provincial Government or someone it authorises (Section 10). Officials can inspect factory records and take statements to enforce the law (Section 12), and rules made under the Ordinance can carry a penalty of up to five hundred rupees for contravention (Section 17).

This is an old law from 1961, and the fine amounts stated (five hundred rupees) are clearly historical figures that will have been superseded by later amendments or provincial minimum wage legislation, since labour matters and minimum wage-setting have since become largely a provincial responsibility. Readers should check current provincial minimum wage notifications rather than rely on the figures in this extract.