The Asia-Pacific region comprises 58 countries and territories. The Asia-Pacific region is home to approximately 4.5 billion people.

 The wealthiest 5% of the population controlling close to 70% of total wealth in the region,” reports the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).

Approximately half of all urban dwellers in South Asia live in slums. In large countries such as Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand and Viet Nam, 30 to 60% of the urban population lives in slums

Sharp inequalities continue to be persistent in the region, with nearly 2 in 4 people still unable to afford a healthy diet. 1.9 billion people are unable to afford a healthy diet, driven by high prices of fruits, vegetables and dairy products, making it impossible for the poor to achieve healthy diets.

About 350.6 million people in the Asia and Pacific region are estimated to have been undernourished in 2019, about 51% of the world’s total of undernourished people.

An estimated 74.5 million children under five years of age were stunted and a total of 31.5 million were wasted in the Asia and Pacific region. The majority of these children in the region live in Southern Asia with 55.9 million stunted and 25.2 million wasted children.”

Estimates predict a 14.3% increase in the prevalence of moderate or severe wasting among children under 5 years of age, equal to an additional 6.7 million children, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Asia-Pacific: Just 5% of the Region’s Population Owns 70% of Its Total Wealth | Inter Press Service (ipsnews.net)

 A cladding system similar to the one used at Grenfell Tower spectacularly failed safety tests in 2001, the public inquiry into the disaster has heard.

 The deadly impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the most deprived areas in England and Wales has been even more pronounced than first thought, according to research that reveals the north-west lost three times more years of life than the south-west.

Deaths have been unevenly distributed socioeconomically and geographically ever since the crisis began. However, until now, the full scale of inequalities has been underestimated, a study published in the journal PLOS Medicine suggests.

In the new study, led by the University of Manchester, researchers measured years of life lost attributable to the pandemic – directly or indirectly, as well as excess deaths. Years of life lost is a strong measure of premature mortality because it takes into account both the number of deaths and the age at which they occur.

The findings of the new analysis are striking, researchers say, and suggest the true toll of the pandemic has been even deadlier in poorer areas than initially thought. “The impact of the pandemic, when quantified using years of life lost, was higher than previously thought on the most deprived areas of England and Wales, widening pre-existing health inequalities,” said Evangelos Kontopantelis, who led the research. 

Between March and December 2020, 1,645 years of life were lost per 100,000 of the population in the most deprived areas of England and Wales. In the most affluent areas, 916 years of life were lost per 100,000 people. The figures mean that almost twice as many years of life were lost in the very poorest areas of the country compared with the wealthiest.

Stark inequalities were also found when examining excess deaths, especially in younger age groups, the researchers said. There were 11 times as many excess deaths in deprived areas compared with the most affluent areas in 15- to 44-year-olds, three times as many in 45- to 64-year-olds, and almost twice as many in 65- to 74-year-olds. Excess deaths were 40% higher in 75- to 84-year-olds living in the most deprived areas compared with the least.

Clare Bambra, a professor of public health at the University of Newcastle, explained: “These findings reiterate that the pandemic has been very unequal – people in our most deprived communities have suffered most.”

Covid impact in poorer areas of England and Wales ‘worse than first thought’ | Coronavirus | The Guardian

 A report from the International Labour Organization says China continues to carry out discriminatory work policies, such as forced labour, impossible production expectations and long working hours, against the Uighurs in its northwest province of Xinjiang.

It stressed that China has violated various articles of the Employment Policy Convention of 1964, which Beijing ratified in 1997, including the right to freely choose employment.

The 870-page report, titled Application of International Labour Standards, was an assessment by the Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations.

It looks at different countries progress from Congo to Afghanistan in relation to ratifying labour conventions and details abuses in areas like child labour, equality of opportunity, maternity protection, vocational training and more.

China continues to engage in widespread and systematic “programmes” involving the extensive use of forced labour of the Uighur and other Turkic and Muslim minorities in Xinjiang.

Some 13 million members of the ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang are targeted based on their ethnicity and religion, adding that Beijing’s justified its methods in a context of “poverty alleviation”, “vocational training”, “reeducation through labour” and “de-extremification”.

A key feature of China’s programme is the use of forced labour in or around internment or “re-education” camps housing some 1.8 million Uighur and other Turkic or Muslim peoples in the region. The abuses take place in or around prisons and workplaces across Xinjiang and other parts of the country. Life in “re-education centres” or camps is characterised by extraordinary hardship, lack of freedom of movement, and physical and psychological torture. It also alleges prison labour in cotton harvesting and the manufacture of clothing and footwear.

Outside Xinjiang, Uighur workers live and work in segregation, are required to attend Mandarin classes and are prevented from practising their culture or religion.

China continues its labour abuse practices against Uighurs: UN | Uighur News | Al Jazeera

Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka’s president has banned strikes in the health and electricity sectors as trade union action that has crippled state-run hospitals entered its sixth day.

The President on Saturday invoked a 1979 law prohibiting stoppages in the two sectors, declaring all related work “essential public services”.  The tough regulations allow courts to hand down five-year jail terms and confiscate the assets of those refusing work. Professionals like doctors can find their names struck off registers. There are a lot of strict punitive measures for those convicted under the Essential Services Act.

Sri Lanka is in the grip of a foreign exchange crisis that has crippled the economy, and the unions are demanding better promotional prospects, restructuring of their pay scales and higher allowances.

The government has refused, saying the current economic situation does not allow it to increase the salaries budget. Thousands of health workers have been taking part in the strike action, leaving only emergency services functioning at state hospitals and many routine services put off.

Electricity sector workers are not on strike, but they too have threatened trade union action if the government goes ahead with plans to sell a thermal power plant to a US company.

Sri Lanka bans strikes by healthcare workers amid hospital crisis | Health News | Al Jazeera

 Here are some facts:-

 4.3 million children, or nearly one in three, were living in poverty in 2019/2020, according to the latest available data. Charities say the nationwide figure will be higher now.

– The child poverty rate was 31% in 2019/2020, up from 27% in 2013/14.

– 75% of children growing up in poverty live in families where at least one person works.

– 46% of children from Black and minority ethnic groups live in poverty compared with 26% of children in white British families.

– 49% of children in lone-parent families are in poverty, in part due to higher childcare costs and lower earnings potential.

– Children in larger families are twice as likely to be poor as those from smaller families.

– 1.8 million children were growing up in very deep poverty even before the pandemic stuck   

– A million households – including 550,000 children – were estimated to have been destitute in 2019, up 35% since 2017.

– The cost of raising a child to the age of 18 is about £160,700 for a couple and £193,800 for a lone parent – up more than 3% since last year, says the Child Poverty Action Group.

– Britain has one of the world’s most expensive childcare systems, with the average bill rising by 4%-5% in 2021.

– More than 1.74 million children in England were eligible for free school meals in January 2021, up 17.3% on January 2020 before the COVID-19 pandemic took hold.

– Children from lower-income families are developmentally a year behind better-off children when they start school.

 “It is not widely understood but India does not have a working class — instead it has large labouring castes that are trapped in an inherently iniquitous system,” says Manas Ray, professor in cultural studies at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata.

Last year, Bangladesh posted a per capita income of $2,227 or $280 higher than that of India, its larger neighbour.

 “Bangladesh, once regarded as a ‘basket case,’ can now be expected to maintain this lead in the foreseeable future because of investments in the social sectors, especially education and health,” says Ray.

In a global report released in January, the British charity Oxfam describes India as ‘very unequal,’ with the top 10 percent of its 1.4 billion population having cornered 77 percent of the total national wealth. 

The report, Inequality Kills, estimates that inequality has been rising over the last three decades.

Oxfam calculates that it would take 941 years for a minimum wage worker in rural India to earn what a top paid executive at a leading Indian garment company earns in a year. India’s stark wealth inequality is attributed by Oxfam to “an economic system rigged in favour of the super-rich over the poor and marginalised.”

The Oxfam report says that 63 million Indians are pushed into poverty each year because of unaffordable healthcare costs.

 Public spending on healthcare ranks among the lowest in the world — 1.8 percent of GDP in 2021. Although India is a major destination for medical tourism because of its fine specialty hospitals, several of its poorest states have infant mortality rates higher than those in sub-Saharan Africa.

During 2021, when the COVID-19 pandemic caused 84 percent of Indian households to suffer a drop in income, the number of billionaires in the country grew from 102 to 142. 

During the worst months of the pandemic (March 2020 to November 2021), the wealth of India’s billionaires more than doubled, from $313 billion to $719 billion.

“The pandemic proved to be a crunch point which exposed the country’s uncaringly iniquitous system,” says Ray, referring to how a suddenly imposed lockdown left millions of internal migrant workers stranded in the cities with no jobs, food or shelter and with little choice but to trek to their distant homes in the rural hinterland, often hundreds of kilometres away.

It took petitions in the Supreme Court for government to admit that more than half a million people were walking down the highways trying to get home, often braving assaults by police charged with enforcing lockdown rules. Trade unions said the bulk of an estimated 200 million migrant workers in India’s different cities and towns lost their jobs.

In contrast to the callous treatment meted out to internal migrant workers, the government spared no costs in arranging special flights to fetch students and privileged people who found themselves stuck in foreign countries that had also imposed lockdowns to stop the spread of the highly contagious COVID-19 virus.

Inheritance tax was abolished in 1985 and in 2017 the government abolished wealth tax, allowing the concentration of wealth in rich families. In September 2019, corporate tax was slashed from 35 percent to 26 percent.

The Oxfam report called for higher taxes to be imposed on the richest 10 percent of the Indian population to help fund measures to reduce inequality. That’s easier than done because only one percent of Indians declare earnings sufficient to attract taxation.

In 2021 only 50.89 million individuals in a population of 1.4 billion people filed income tax returns, and only half that number paid any worthwhile tax.

Prabhat Patnaik, former professor of economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, agrees that that the solution to gross inequity lies in “taxing the rich and investing the proceeds for the neglected social sectors — it is shame that large numbers of people continue to have no access to health or education.”

Growing Inequality – Pro-rich Policies Buoy Billionaires’ Rise in India | Inter Press Service (ipsnews.net)

Sharon Graham, Unite general secretary said the “remaining financial support” her union provides the Labour Party was “under review”. Unite is Britain’s second-biggest union and Labour’s biggest donor.

stressed that Sir Keir’s party needed to “act like labour, be the party for workers” and accused Labour-run Coventry council of “mistreatment” of members, where refuse workers have been on strike for weeks in a long-running row over pay.

“Your behaviour and mistreatment of our members will not be accepted. It’s time to act like labour, be the party for workers.”

Graham said that Coventry council, which is run by Labour, has “time and again totally misrepresented the union’s claims for its bin drivers”. She added that the local authority “should be ashamed of the spin it has tried to make about its own workers’ pay rates”.

In December Ms Graham said she did not think Unite was getting “the best value” from its cash by giving it to Labour. She said: “The fact that I am being quite robust is because Labour needs to talk about workers, needs to defend workers and needs to defend communities.”

Labour facing bankruptcy as biggest union donor Unite says it could pull remaining support | The Independent

 The government of Mauritius has accused Britain of “crimes against humanity” and urged it to bow to international law and surrender control of the disputed Chagos Islands.

Despite concerted opposition from both the UK and US, Mauritius has won a string of significant victories, first at the UN General Assembly, then at the UN’s International Court of Justice, and finally at the UN’s tribunal for settling maritime disputes.

 UN maps now show the territory as Mauritian, while Britain has recently been ordered by two international courts to “decolonise” Mauritius by formally renouncing its sovereignty over Chagos.

 The following report of developments in western Kazakhstan is based on information from the Russian trade union website infoprof.ru.

Strikes and protests of working people continue in Kazakhstan despite harsh suppression of the January protests.

Workers at the MAEK-Kazatomprom (Kazakh Atomic Industry) and at the Glass and Plastic Pipes Factory in Mangistau Province, who downed tools on Monday, are on strike for a third day. On Tuesday they were joined by rescue workers, guards, and firefighters of KMG Security.

The strikers have put up tents and stoves and are staying on the grounds of their enterprises. Local residents and workers at neighboring enterprises are giving them active support and collecting food and water for them. New work collectives may join the strike this week.

The strikers at MAEK-Kazatomprom in Aktau are demanding a 100% increase in wages. They all rejected the employers’ offer to raise wages by 30%. The workers at the pipe factory are demanding the release of arrested colleagues, a wage increase, and the return of their factory to KazMunaiGaz (Kazakh Municipal Gas), from which it was separated when it was privatized and rationalized several years ago.

The staff of KMG Security went on strike last summer, but many of their demands concerning compliance with labor legislation, payment of bonuses, and improvement in working conditions were not met. The promised wage increase was implemented only in part.

In Janaozen a new mass meeting has already been in progress for a week. Its participants are the unemployed and also workers from various enterprises whose employers refuse to take them on as regular staff and use them only on the basis of outsourcing. A whole series of work collectives are taking a stand against outsourcing.

Unemployed young people are demanding that they be given work without delay, that new jobs be created and new enterprises built in the region, where many deposits of natural resources are already nearing depletion. This demand was raised at the mass meetings in January and is now prominent in the current protests. The mass meeting is now continuing night and day.

On February 8 protests began in Aktau by mothers demanding the building of schools and kindergartens and also an end to illegal commercial construction. Their protests were joined by unemployed people and outsourced workers.

Together they decided to support the participants in the mass meeting in Janaozen, organized their own protest outside the building of the provincial administration, and then the following night blocked the carriageways of the city’s central streets. The police dispersed the crowd, but the protest is likely to resume.

Clearly, the protests are not dying out but are again growing in scale. The strikers at the three enterprises and the unemployed are now protesting day and night and refusing to disperse. Last month’s mass strikes and protests may recur, especially in view of the fact that not a single social demand has been met apart from a temporary cut in the price of gas for 180 days. 

Source:  https://aitrus.info/node/5908. Translated by Stephen Shenfield

Strikes and protests continue in Kazakhstan | World Socialist Party of the US (wspus.org)