ISLAMABAD, June 15: With reports of cracks appearing in the PTCL Workers Unions Action Committee, another group of workers called off strike on Wednesday after accepting a package offered by the management but other groups announced they would continue the country-wide strike. There were rumours that law-enforcing agencies had picked up a hardline union leader and more leaders and members of their families were being rounded up across the country.
According to sources, hardline union leader Malik Maqbool Hussain, who has been advocating the idea of jamming the countrywide telecommunication system, disappeared on Wednesday morning.
Since the arrest of three main leaders of the action committee — Haji Khan Bhatti, Sirajul Hassan and Qazi Abdurehman — and subsequent announcement by leadership of the Pakistan Telecommunication Employees Union to call off the strike, Mr Hussain has been trying to work out a plan to jam the communication network before June 18.
He had announced the postponement of the plan to jam the network on June 15 only as a tactical move, sources said.
They said Mr Hussain had been constantly on the move after announcement of a fresh date for the bidding of 26 per cent shares of the PTCL. He used to call media people from different phone numbers.
The union leaders said the government needed signatures of all the collective bargain agent union leaders on the agreement, therefore, it had begun arresting the leaders in order to ‘force them to sign the deal.’
Meanwhile, children of PTCL workers held a protest demonstration in front of the Parliament House and demanded withdrawal of decision to privatize the company.
Secretary-General of the Pakistan Telecom Unions Action Ittehad Sabir Hussain announced at a press conference that his supporters had accepted the package offered by the management because it guaranteed workers’ rights according to the PTCL Regularization Act 1996.
However, a number of union leaders said the attendance of workers was negligible all over the country and PTCL installations were still being run by personnel of the Army Signals Corps.
They said more than 240,000 telephone connections were not functioning in various parts of the country.
In a related development, People’s Party Parliamentarians’ leader Makhdoom Amin Fahim has termed the PTCL privatization a ‘big financial scandal’.
In a statement, he warned prospective buyers to avoid entering into any deal with the government.
LONG MARCH PLANNED: In Lahore, the action committee decided to hold a long march to Islamabad on June 18 in a bid to stop bidding for PTCL shares.
The decision was taken in a meeting of the committee held here. Representatives of eight out of nine member organizations of the coalition participated in the meeting.
Action committee’s office-bearers told Dawn that the workers were united under the banner of the action committee but they would not jam the telecommunication network as they were patriot and did not want to cause any damage to the telecom system.
In Karachi, PTCL workers questioned the legal validity of the agreement signed by one of the unions and the management.
Talking to Dawn, Latif Qureishi of action committee said that the preamble of the agreement stipulated that all the unions must agree to it.
The preamble of the agreement, as quoted by him, reads: “The agreement subject to signing by representatives of all the unions shall be effective from July 1, 2005 and shall remain operative and binding on all the parties till June 31, 2007 after which it will lapse”.
Sources said the main leaders of the action committee, Haji Khan Bhatti and Sirajul Hasan, were being taken to Islamabad where they would be made to sign the agreement.
