July 15, 2008	Tuesday	Rajab 11, 1429

NAUSHAHRO FEROZE, July 14: The central president of PTCL Employees Union, Haji Khan Bhatti, has warned that if the privatisation of PTCL and implementation of new pay scales were not shelved within a week they would launch a country-wide protest movement.He was speaking to protesters in Moro town on Monday.

He said that the PTCL was earning Rs30 billion profit every year but the government sold it to a Dubai-based company in instalments as a gift and deprived the country of earnings of billions of rupees.

He said in the first phase, 17,000 employees were deprived of their jobs in the name of golden handshake but after the payment of one instalment nothing was paid to them and their pension was stopped.

He said now when the government had announced regularisation of all federal government contract employees, the managing director of PTCL had announced a new pay scale which would deprive about 20,000 more employees of their jobs.