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The Committee notes the Government’s report according to which the Convention continues to be implemented through the enforcement of the Factories Act, 1934, and the Mines Act, 1923.

The Committee takes this opportunity to refer to paragraphs 191 to 202 of its General Survey of 2001 on the night work of women in industry, in which it observed that the present trend is no doubt to move away from a blanket prohibition against women’s night work and to give the social partners the responsibility for determining the extent of the permitted exemptions. It also noted that many countries are in the process of easing or eliminating legal restrictions on women’s employment during the night with the aim of improving women’s opportunities in employment and strengthening non-discrimination. The Committee further recalled that member States are under an obligation to review periodically their protective legislation in light of scientific and technological knowledge with a view to revising all gender-specific provisions and discriminatory constraints. This obligation stems from Article 11(3) of the 1979 UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (to which parenthetically Pakistan acceded in 1996), as later reaffirmed in point 5(b) of the 1985 ILO resolution on equal opportunities and equal treatment for men and women in employment.

More concretely, the Committee considered that the Protocol of 1990 to Convention No. 89 was designed as a tool for smooth transition from outright prohibition to free access to night employment, especially for those States that wished to offer the possibility of night employment to women workers but felt that some institutional protection should remain in place to avoid exploitative practices and a sudden worsening of the social conditions of women workers. It also suggested that greater efforts should be made by the Office to help those constituents who are still bound by the provisions of Convention No. 89, and who are not yet ready to ratify the new Night Work Convention, 1990 (No. 171), to realize the advantages of modernizing their legislation in line with the provisions of the Protocol. Therefore, the Committee invites the Government to give favourable consideration to the ratification of the 1990 Protocol which affords greater flexibility in the application of the Convention while remaining focused on the protection of female workers.

Finally, the Committee would be grateful to the Government for providing, in accordance with Part V of the report form, up-to-date information concerning the practical application of the Convention, especially as regards the application of the exceptions allowed under the provisions of the Convention. The Committee understands that women workers employed in export-oriented industries are often exempted from the general prohibition on night work. It therefore requests the Government to supply more specific information on the grounds on which special authorizations to export-oriented factories are granted, the average number and duration of permits delivered per year, the approximate number of workers concerned and how it is ensured that this practice remains in conformity with the narrowly defined suspension or exemption possibilities provided for in the Convention.