19 February 2004	Thursday	27 Zilhaj 1424

KARACHI, Feb 18: A City Council delegation on Wednesday visited the hunger strikers' camp set up by sacked workers of the KWSB and assured the Board's People's Labour Union (PLU) that all the remaining 534 employees retrenched in 1998 would be got reinstated.

The delegation, headed by the Council's senior presiding officer Muslim Pervaiz expressed solidarity with the protesting ex-employees and supported their demand of reinstatement.

The members of the delegation, who included Siddique Rathore, Saeed Ghani, Engineer Abdul Aziz and Farida Murad, told them that the council would shortly adopt a resolution in this regard.

Earlier, the city Nazim's coordinator for the KWSB, Mr Faizanullah, also visited the camp and expressed solidarity with the office-bearers of the PLU and the protesters.

Apprising the delegation of the plight of the retrenched workers, the PLU general secretary, Mohsin Raza, said that a total 1,107 employees were unlawfully dismissed from the KWSB in 1998. Of them, he added, 573 had already been reinstated. Most of the remaining ones are grade-2 employees.

He told the council members that some of the victims appointed on employees' son quota, and also included widows of former employees, were running from pillar to the post to get themselves reinstated as they were nowadays facing serious financial crisis.

Later, the hunger strikers, including Sheikh Majeed, Latif Mughal, Manzoor Badayuni, PLU's Liaquat Magsi, Wasim Baig, Nadim Ahmed, Amin Baloch and Pervaiz Khan were persuaded to call off their hunger strike.

The other prominent figures who visited the camp and expressed solidarity with the hunger strikers included MPAs Dr Hameeda Khuhro and Rafiq Engineer, Lyari Town's Naib Nazim, Mohammad Khan Awan and Malik Sarwar Awan.