150 sacked KESC staff: Unions to petition SC

Workers claim that KESC’s actions are unconstitutional.

KARACHI:

The sacked workers of the Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC) are planning to take their case to the Supreme Court on Monday for retaliation to KESC’s recent action against them.

“The Mazdoor Alliance will file a petition in the Supreme Court against KESC’s management,” said Lateef Mughal, who is with the Peoples Workers Union. “It will challenge its actions against the workers. KESC cannot sack workers without serving show-cause notices.” He told The Express Tribune that KESC is “double targeting” the workers, first by implicating them in fake cases and then by “rendering them jobless” and that the Mazdoor Alliance is concerned about KESC’s legal violations.

According to sources, the federal minister for power, Naveed Qamar, and the Sindh chief minister met on Friday to discuss KESC and its affairs.

The number of sacked workers has now reached 150. Moreover, 15 executive body members and leaders of KESC’s labour union, including the chairman, Muhammad Akhlaq Khan, have also been let go.

The union leaders have said that KESC’s actions are not in line with the rules and regulations of the industrial relations ordinance. They also said that KESC has sacked its workers under the Standing Order of 1968, however, no legal notice or show-cause notice was given to the sacked workers.

For its part, KESC has said that its management has sacked 38 workers who were allegedly involved in attacking its head office. The remaining 139 workers were sacked on May 29 because they attacked employees and installations.

KESC’s spokesman, Aminur Rehman, said that they are concerned about the increasing attacks on their repair teams by union miscreants. He also expressed distress over the government’s failure to protect KESC employees, offices and installations, although this was ordered by the Sindh High Court on June 23.

KESC believes that the negligence of the civil authorities and law enforcement agencies has rendered the entire population of Karachi helpless at the hands of a few hundred union miscreants.

The KESC spokesman demanded immediate action on the high court’s orders and said that the government needs to perform its duties to provide safety to KESC employees.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 3^rd, 2011.