HYDERABAD, March 28: The plant manager of LPG, Ashfaq Leghari, has refuted allegations levelled by the Awami Action Committee, Union Council-4, Qasimabad, that local people are being denied jobs in the Jamshoro Joint Venture Limited.
Speaking at a press conference at the plant site on Monday, he said only a brother-in-law of one of committee leaders, Mehboob Abro, was denied job because he simply was an intermediate student.
‘If such tactics are employed by so-called nationalist leaders, history of the Nooriabad industrial area will be repeated where industries were shifted from Sindh to Punjab. If this happened, there will be no foreign investment and, subsequently, no job opportunities in the province.’
He claimed that the project had given huge benefits to local people who had been provided with jobs in all sections.
On environmental pollution, he said the project was covered under the Environmental Impact Assessment. He added that the SSGC’s headquarters (HQ-3) had been producing NGL (natural gas liquefied) in the same area for 25 years but no complaint had been received regarding environmental hazard.
He disclosed that a community centre at a cost of Rs10 million would be set up in the area for which consensus was being evolved with the help of union council-4 office bearers because it was not supposed to benefit some individuals.
‘I will certainly approach the local administration and police for help in case an agitation is launched,’ Mr Leghari said when asked whether he felt insecure and added that at the moment there was no sense of insecurity among JJVL employees, including US nationals. He said the taluka nazim and other officials concerned had assured him of their cooperation.
He said Mr Abro, president of the hitherto unknown action committee, was not a resident of the area but he approached for a job for his brother-in-law, an intermediate student, as a helper notwithstanding the fact that all employees, including engineers, did their chores personally because there was no provision of helper.
‘These tactics will affect foreign investment. The US-based company, Hanover, has major stakes in this project while more investment in the shape of the project’s expansion is expected,’ he maintained.
He said people should not resort to measures which could affect investment plans in Sindh and get the industry shifted to Multan or somewhere else.
Giving figures, he said all 14 staff members of the JJVL were Sindhis, of 43 security guards, 19 were Sindhis and of the 20-member staff of Hanover, eight were Sindhis. He said he had offered jobs for serving food and sanitation work but Sindhi-speaking people described it as a job of sweepers.
He further said Mir Mohammad Talpur, who was working as an office boy, was the nephew of action committee leader Qaiser Talpur. Likewise, he said, relatives of some other people who were protesting against the JJVL were already working at the plant.
About sacked workers, he said the issue related to the SSGC which controlled the HQ-3 and he had no concern with it.
On March 26, the action committee had threatened to launch a protest movement from April 3 if 15 workers sacked by the HQ-3 gas company of Shah Bukhari Deh were not reinstated and local people were not appointed in the JJVL and the HQ3.
SU: Presiding over the 29th meeting of the academic council of the Sindh University, Vice-Chancellor Mazharul Haq Siddiqui has urged the academic staff to concentrate on improving the quality of education and research.
