Honouring commitment: KESC management violated July pact, claims labour union

They promised sacked workers their salaries for three months but are not letting them work.

KARACHI: Hundreds of workers of the Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC) held a protest demonstration against their management for allegedly violating a pact signed on July 26. The workers organised a sit-in and chanted slogans in front of the press club.

Akhlaq Ahmed, the chairman of the KESC Labour Union (CBA), said that they had gathered because the KESC management is not following the terms of the pact. After three months of protests, the management accepted that the workers would not be forced to take the voluntary separation scheme. According to the scheme, the employees were given a certain amount of money for volunteering to retire. The management had also said that all the sacked employees will be paid for three months, but they only received their basic salary for one month. This is why we are here, said Ahmed.

He said that it was decided that a committee would be constituted in a week to settle the issue of 286 employees who were dismissed by the management during the protests. It’s been 20 days and the committee still has not been constituted, he said.

The joint secretary of the KESC labour union, Aziz-ur-Rehman, said that the KESC management is not allowing its old workers to work, while the newly appointed employees are creating problems for the company. He said that so far, 11 workers have been killed in accidents because they lacked proper training.

Talking about the their plans, Rehman said that they will meet with the mediators of the pact, who include the governor, Taj Haider from the Pakistan Peoples Party, DCO Mohammad Hussain Syed, and IG Sindh Wajid Ali Durrani.

“We will inform them about the situation and will give them two days to fix it,” Rehman said, adding that if the issue was resolved in two days, then the CBA will decide a plan of action.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 17^th, 2011.