ISLAMABAD, June 13: While the Pakistan Telecommunication Company (PTCL) reiterated on Monday its claim that the entire system was running smoothly and over 80 per cent of its employees were reporting for duty, the leadership of the PTCL Workers Unions’ Action Committee said they stood by their threat to jam the country’s telecommunication system by June 15. Meanwhile, a union leader said the PTCL management had sacked 28 union leaders and the number of the arrests made across the country exceeded 600.
“We will let the world know how the systems is jammed by workers because the army only knows how to fire bullets but does not know how to run the system,” member of the action committee Malik Maqbool Hussain told Dawn.
He said the management had fired him and 27 other prominent union leaders, nine of them members of the action committee.
Those dismissed included Rana Tahir, Haji Khan Bhatti, Shahid Ayyub, Latif Qureshi, Sabir Butt, Javed Imran, Ziauddin, Ashraf Khan, Qazi Rashid, Riazuddin, Gulzar Odho, Zafar Zaidi and Raza Zaidi, he said
PTCL President Junaid Khan confirmed that some of the workers had been fired but said he did not know about their number.
Union leaders said more than 600 workers had been arrested from different parts of the country, adding that 110 arrests had been confirmed from Dera Ismail Khan, 85 from Quetta, five from Daharki, 60 from Lahore, 170 from Mardan, 35 from Peshawar, three from Sargodha, nine each from Multan and Faisalabad, two from Karachi, seven from Hyderabad, and more than 30 from Rawalpindi and Islamabad.
According to our staff reporter in Karachi, eight employees were arrested in a late Monday night raid in the city.
The union leaders alleged that 40 relatives of the workers had also been arrested.
The PTCL president said security of the PTCL installations had been assigned to the security forces but technical operations of the company were still being performed by the PTCL employees throughout the country.
However, the union leaders said the technical control of the installations was in the hands of the Army Signal Corps.
CONDEMNED: The workers’ action committee, meanwhile, condemned attacks on PTCL installations in Balochistan and said ‘those controlling the installations’ were to be blamed for the sabotage.
It said in a statement that trade unions, civil rights groups and professional associations would observe protest in front of Pakistani embassies in various parts of the world on June 15.
The committee appealed to political parties and trade unions to call a general strike on June 18.
In Lahore, several employees of the PTCL resumed duties reportedly following a threat of dismissal from the management.
Our Staff Correspondent from Quetta reports: Telephone links of Kohlu and Mastung with the rest of the country was disrupted after unidentified people blew up a microwave tower near Kohlu and cut off fibre optical lines in Mastung.
An explosive device planted around the tower blew it up with a powerful explosion in the Kashik area, 25km off Kohlu.
In another incident, underground fibre optical line in Mastung, 50 km south of Quetta, was cut off. As a result several thousands of telephones become in Mastung and adjoining areas went out of order.
Official sources said that repair of microwave tower and fibre optical line could not be started due to strike of PTCL employees.
Meanwhile, police recovered a bomb planted near the wall of the PTCL exchange in Mach and bomb disposal squad defused it.
In Karachi, services offered by the PTCL were badly hit as protesting workers stayed away from telephone exchanges and other installations.
Eight members of the PTCL union were picked up from a Saddar hotel late Monday night.
Sources in the PTCL said that some employees of the PTCL had gathered at the hotel to hold a meeting and devise their future line of action. Inspector Wasif Qureshi along with a police party conducted a raid and picked up eight employees.
Sources said that those arrested held important posts in different unions of the PTCL.
However, Saddar and Clifton town police officers denied the arrests.
According to our Peshawar bureau, PTCL workers went on strike in the seven agencies of the Federally Administered Tribal Area (Fata), officials said.
They said technical staff of the army had been deployed at main installations in Peshawar. However, an official said technicians of the army were facing difficulties to operate the high-tech system of the PTCL.
Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Sherpao has warned that the PTCL strike leaders could be tried as ‘terrorists’, reports AFP.
ISLAMABAD, June 13: While the Pakistan Telecommunication Company (PTCL) reiterated on Monday its claim that the entire system was running smoothly and over 80 per cent of its employees were reporting for duty, the leadership of the PTCL Workers Unions’ Action Committee said they stood by their threat to jam the country’s telecommunication system by June 15. Meanwhile, a union leader said the PTCL management had sacked 28 union leaders and the number of the arrests made across the country exceeded 600.
