Payment of Wages Act, 1936

The Payment of Wages Act, 1936 is one of Pakistan's oldest labour laws, and it exists to make sure workers actually get paid on time and in full. It applies to people working in factories, "industrial establishments" (a broad category covering things like tramways, docks, mines, plantations, and workshops), commercial establishments, and railway workers, as set out in Section 1(4) and the definitions in Section 2.

Section 3 makes the employer (including a contractor) responsible for paying wages, though in factories, industrial establishments, and railways it can instead fall on whoever is officially named as the responsible manager or supervisor. Section 4 requires wage periods to be fixed and capped at one month. Section 5 sets firm payment deadlines: wages must be paid within 7 days of the end of the wage period for workplaces with under 1,000 employees, or within 10 days for larger ones; if someone's employment is terminated, they must be paid within 2 working days.

Sections 7 through 13 regulate what can lawfully be deducted from wages -- fines (Section 8), absence from duty (Section 9), damage or loss caused by the worker (Section 10), the value of services rendered such as housing (Section 11), recovery of advances (Section 12), and payments to co-operative societies or insurance schemes (Section 13). This structure exists to stop employers from making arbitrary or excessive deductions.

Sections 15-19 create an enforcement and complaints system: workers (or groups of workers, under Section 16) can bring claims about unpaid or wrongly deducted wages before an appointed authority, with a right of appeal under Section 17, and the Act also penalises malicious or vexatious claims. Section 20 makes it an offence to break the Act's requirements, and Section 26 lets government make detailed rules, including -- as stated in the text -- the ability to set a fine of up to two hundred rupees for breaching those rules.

This is a very old law (1936) that has been amended repeatedly over the decades, most recently with changes extending it to commercial establishments in 2001. Any specific historic figures like the two-hundred-rupee rule-contravention fine are clearly outdated given inflation since 1936, and readers should check the current official text and rules for present-day enforcement figures.