April 27, 2007	Friday	Rabi-us-Sani 09, 1428

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PESHAWAR, April 26: Employees of the Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL) on Thursday observed a strike and staged a sit-in in front of the Peshawar Press Club to condemn an assassination attempt on their general manager.

Syed Mohammad Hasnain, the General Manager of the company, was critically injured and his driver Jan Mohammad killed in an armed attack by some unidentified terrorists on Wednesday.

A large number of workers gathered in front of the Peshawar Press Club and blocked the road for quite some time for all sorts of traffic.

The protesting workers, wearing black armbands and holding black flags, demanded of the government to arrest the killers within a week and said they would be launching a province-wide protest campaign if this was not done.

They also chanted slogans against the government, asking the authorities concerned to arrest the culprits.

Speaking at a press conference after the protest demonstration, the President of the Sui Northern Gas Employees Union, Zulfiqar Afghani, announced two hours’ pen-down strike daily for a week, and said the option of stopping gas supply across the province would be considered if their demands were not met.

The acting General Manager of the company, Momin Khan, and other top officials were present on the occasion.

Mr Afghani said a meeting of the central executive council of their union would be held in Lahore on Friday to decide the future line of action. He said the provincial government had completely failed in providing protection to workers of federal institutions.

He said the employees of the federal departments were performing duties in dangerous conditions and the provincial government had miserably failed to provide them security.

He pointed out that even after the passage of one day of the incident, federal ministers and the NWFP chief minister had not issued any statement condemning the attack. Their attitude had badly hurt the workers of the company.

He especially named federal minister Amir Muqam and said that he never used to tire visiting their offices for his own work, but did not issue any statement condemning the incident.

He demanded of the government to arrest the culprits within a week and pay compensation to the family of driver Jan Mohammad. Otherwise gas supply to the people of the entire province would be stopped.