PTCL claims ‘smooth functioning’; over 250 workers held
Dawn Report
ISLAMABAD, June 12: As the Pakistan Telecommunication Company claimed here on Sunday that its entire system was functioning ‘smoothly and uninterrupted’, police rounded up over 250 workers in Islamabad and Lahore and other cities and towns of Punjab.
Over a dozen union activists and PTCL workers were arrested in Quetta, according to Superintendent of Police Qazi Wahid. However, PTCL union action committee claimed that between 20 and 30 employers, including provincial union leaders, had been detained.
“All networks are being run smoothly by PTCL technicians and workers,” the company’s president and chief executive Junaid Khan said.
Security forces and army’s technical personnel took over PTCL installations across the country on Saturday night after union leaders called a strike in protest against the government’s plan to privatize the company.
Federal Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao said on Sunday that the government wanted PTCL employees to resume their work in a peaceful manner because their “strike call has been declared illegal by the National Industrial Relations Committee”.
He threatened action against anyone who would attempt to obstruct the smooth functioning of the PTCL.
In Islamabad, the authorities directed law-enforcement agencies to arrest any worker trying to create a law and order situation and register cases against them under Anti-Terrorism Act (ATC).
A security source said that a list of PTCL employees had been provided to the security staff deployed on the gates of PTCL installations and only those whose names were on the list were being allowed in.
A police official told Dawn that security around the installations had been stepped up and anyone trying to create problem would be booked under the ATC.
Seven PTCL staff members arrested by Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) police were sent to Adiala jail after the Margalla police registered an FIR against them.
Zafar Zaidi and Tanveer Shah, PTCL action committee member, have been detained by the ICT police for one month.
Police said a group of PTCL workers gathered outside the G- 8/4 telephone exchange after they had been evacuated by law- enforcement personnel and started shouting slogans against the government’s privatization policy and the Pakistan Telecommunication Company administration.
According to a Dawn report from Lahore, police picked up over 200 employees and their relatives in the province after troops took over Pakistan Telecommunication Company installation on Saturday.
Those picked up included union leaders and workers and relatives of those who were not found when police raided their homes.
In Karachi, senior Pakistan Telecommunication Company officials claimed that no employees had been taken into custody in the city or any other place in Sindh.
They said that most of the union leaders had gone to Islamabad.
