Stop modern day slavery at Petrol stations

Mr. Haroon Rashid

Chief Executive & Managing Director

Shell Pakistan Limited (SPL), Shell House,

Dear Sir,

Minimum Wages and Registration with EOBI and SESSI : Shell Petrol Stations.

As a citizen and a newspaper columnist, my research on minimum wages in Pakistan has often led me to some very distressing conclusions of how employees, specially those at the lower (or perhaps lowest ) tier are denied even the minimum wages specified by the law.

Shell Pakistan is an ethical and prestigious organization that I hold in high esteem. It was therefore extremely astonishing and painful for me to discover the disproportionately low wages being paid to the large number of employees who work at Shell petrol stations (company as well as contractor operated).

Petrol pump employees work on a 24 hour shift basis, working on alternate days for 15 days in a month.   Each day of duty involves 8 hours of regular and 16 hours of over time.   The law specifies a minimum wage of Rs.17500 per month for an 8 hour shift and wages at twice the rate for overtime.     Thus the minimum wage that ought to be paid to every employee for first 8 hours of 15 days ought to be Rs.8750 and for additional 240 hours of overtime/ per month ought to be Rs.35000. Thus every employee performing a 24 hour shift on alternate days for 15 days in a month ought to be paid at least Rs.43750 per month. As of today employees working on Shell company operated petrol pumps receive about half of this amount and the contractor operated Shell petrol stations receive about one third of this amount.

It was also sad to see that most employees at the Shell operated petrol stations and none at contractor operated stations were registered to EOBI or Social Security. These are absolutely must and fundamental legal requirements.

May I request you Sir, to kindly immediately restore the legal and human rights of employees at all Shell petrol pumps. The wages of ALL employees, employed by Shell or by a Shell contractor, working on a 24 hour shift basis, ought to be raised to Rs.43750 and they must also be registered with EOBI and SESSI as required by the law.

I would be grateful if you could confirm that these actions have been implemented within 30 days of the receipt of this letter.

Sincerely,

Naeem Sadiq