Putting forward demands: Railway employees’ union warns to go on strike

Call for the recovery of union’s general-secretary Ishtiaq Ahmed Assi.

KARACHI:

The Pakistan Railways Employees’ Union (Prem) has warned that it will go on wheel-jam strike if the government does not find their union’s general-secretary Ishtiaq Ahmed Assi.

Assi has been missing since December 17, along with three friends. He and his friends went missing after they set off from Khushab towards Rawalpindi after attending funeral prayers of a friend.

The union members held a demonstration for the recovery of their union chief on Saturday outside the press club. The protesters alleged that agencies were trying to silence trade unionists and labourers as they were being vocal about the wrong policies of the state. At the protest, some unionists closed their mouths with scotch tapes, while others shouted slogans for his recovery.



“If the government does not contact us right now, we will consider wheel-jam strike across the country,” said Syed Shahid Iqbal, Karachi division president of the union. “If it was a kidnaping for ransom case, then the kidnapers would have contacted the family for money already,” said Iqbal, refuting the news regarding kidnapping for ransom.

Prem union central leader Syed Ali Shah blamed the federal minister for Pakistan Railways for not contacting the family and union leaders after the incident. “The union members and family of Assi are in distress. We demand the prime minister, chief justice and interior minister to help find Assi,” said Shah.

Assi was also a member of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz’s (PML-N) executive council, said Hameedullah Khan Swati, another central leader of the union. “It is shameful that our leader has been abducted in the PML-N’s tenure and they are not taking it seriously,” he said. Swati said that simultaneous protests were being carried out in Hyderabad, Lahore, Peshawar and Kotri by their union representatives.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 22^nd, 2013.