22 May 2004	Saturday	02 Rabi-us-Saani 1425

KARACHI, May 21: Speakers at a meeting on Friday stressed that a professional management be inducted into the Karachi Electricity Supply Corporation to improve its working.

They were speaking at the meeting, organized by the KESC Labour Union at Karachi Press Club. The subject was "Economic murder of workers and role of trade unions."

Pointing out that the army personnel were inducted into the organization in the late 1990s with the promise that they would improve the performance of the public utility, but neither the line losses could be brought down, nor bulk of the arrears were recovered over the years, besides people continue to suffer owing to the planned and unannounced load-shedding etc, proving that very little had been achieved, if at all.

They said a ban was imposed on union activities in the KESC and Wapda in 1999. They said that while the ban had been lifted in Wapda in 2000 and workers were free to carry out their union activities, ban still is in place in the KESC and workers continue to suffer.

They claimed that the salaries of workers had not been revised since 1999 and even workers have not been allowed to present their charter of demand. They said that since then at least three charter of demands should have been presented, negotiated and workers would have benefited.

Referring to the issues being faced by workers in general in the KESC as well as in other organisations, they also demanded that the contract system be abolished and all workers who were recruited under the system be regularized and given all rights and benefits that were available to other regular workers.

Mohammad Akhlaq Khan, Haji Shehzad, Salahuddin Gandapur, Kaiser Bengali, Harris Gazdar, Abdul Hamid, Mazhar Abbas, Abdul Hameed Chhapra and others also spoke.