March 6, 2003	Thursday	Muharram 2, 1424

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window).

QUETTA, March 5: Senator-elect and Jamhoori Watan Party Information Secretary Amanullah Kanrani on Tuesday demanded that the gas companies working in Dera Bugti should recruit the children of retired and dead employees.

Speaking at a press conference here, he said that according to agreements and rules, Pakistan petroleum Limited (PPL), Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC) and Sui Northern Gas Company (SNGC) were bound to give jobs to the children of employees from grade one to four, who retired or died.

He said the SNGC recently employed three youth in place of their fathers but the SSGC and the PPL were not implementing the agreement.

Mr Kanrani, who is president of Balochistan High Court Bar Association, said 152 local employees of the grades in the companies had retired or died but the companies recruited employees from Karachi and other areas. He said: “The PPL has denied 103 jobs to the local people and 49 posts fell vacant in the SSGC due to retirement and death of local employees.”

He said that in 1990, 14 persons, including two local employees, were burnt to death in a fire in the purifying plant of the SSGC in Sui. The company recruited 12 children of the victims belonging to other areas but no one was recruited from the Bugti tribe in place of the local employees.

He said hundreds of jobless people of Dera Bugti and Sui were protesting for the last week and on Tuesday they went on a hunger strike with their children. He said the situation was deteriorating.

He warned that the attitude of the companies was creating unrest and hatred among the tribesmen against them.

He said tribal chief Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti was controlling his people but if the injustice continued, things would be out control. He said the government and the companies should take steps to remove the sense of deprivation among the local people and grant them their rights.

He said the government had not asked any member of the opposition parties to vote for its candidates in the Senate election.

However, he expressed his concern over the success of a senator from Balochistan who did not belong to the province. He said he would take up the issue at the bar’s platform.

He said that though the Election Commission had scrutinized the educational degrees, some candidates had filed fake ones. He said that until the condition was withdrawn, it should be implemented strictly.