ISLAMABAD, June 8: Hundreds of protesters stormed the PTCL headquarters here on Wednesday as they resumed their countrywide strike that they had put off five days ago under an agreement with the government. Meanwhile, the PTCL management is reported to have made some major changes in it operations wing and transferred director general (operations) and between 12 and 15 other officials in the scale of 19 to 22 for their failure of stop the workers’ strike.
On the government side, a high-level meeting was held in the interior ministry to work out a plan of action for meeting any emergency. Presided over by Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, the meeting was attended by officials of Islamabad police,(FIA) and intelligence agencies.
The workers who, had started their on May 25, called it off after the government deferred the privatisation of the PTCL for an indefinite period and signed an agreement with the workers.
Accusing the government of breaching the agreement, about 2,500 to 3,000 workers restarted their strike on the instructions of three members of the PTCL’s Workers Unions Committee.
Members of the committee, Rashid Khan, Shahid Ayyub and Zafar Zaidi, had gone to the interior ministry for talks with Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed and secretaries interior, information technology and privatisation commission. While leaving the PTCL headquarters at 10 am, they had asked their workers to announce a countrywide strike on their behalf if they did not return by 12 noon.
Union leaders said that when the committee members did not return till 1:30 pm, some workers contacted them on their cellphones. The committee members asked the workers to restart the strike, saying they were not being allowed to leave the ministry unless they agreed to privatisation.
