June 19, 2007	Tuesday	Jamadi-us-Sani 03, 1428

ISLAMABAD, June 18: The Trade Union Rights Campaign Pakistan (TURCP) has demanded of the Pakistan Telecommunication Company Ltd (PTCL) management to scrap a plan of sending home about 33,000 workers in the name of Voluntary Separation Scheme (VSS).

The union has issued a statement on the occasion of the completion of two years of the sale 26 per cent share of PTCL to Abu Dhabi telecom giant, Etisalat, on June 18, 2005.

The union has also threatened to come out on roads if the National Industrial Relations Commission (NIRC) did not dispense with justice to the labour class, which was exploited on the face of national and international labour laws.

The union has said that after privatisation, PTCL has progressed, indeed, very little and was on a reverse gear instead. In 2005, before the privatisation of the company, about 50,000 PTCL connections had been snapped on the demand of the consumers. The number of such connections had reached 300,000 last year, as customers had been losing confidence in the utility’s service provision capacity.

The union has demanded of the management of the company, now controlled by foreigners, to understand the problems of the exploited labourers of the company and don’t step back on the promises they had pledged during the privatisation of the company.