LAHORE, Dec 20: The Railway police laid on Tuesday evening a siege to the PR headquarters in Lahore in the wake of an ‘open-ended’ sit-in planned by Rail Mazdoor Ittehad on Wednesday (today).
“Some 100 commandoes are among the 400 or so personnel deputed at the headquarters’ buildings to pre-empt any untoward incident like the one happened last week during the Rabita Mohim (contact campaign) of the Ittehad,” said a PR police official.
Led by Salman Butt, a group of Ittehad activists had started raising slogans last week when their attempt to enter the committee room where the PR Board chairman was presiding over a meeting was foiled by a senior police officer.
The official said no irrelevant person would be allowed onto the headquarters premises on Wednesday while instructions had been issued to employees to prominently display their identity cards while coming to their offices.
Meanwhile, the Rail Mazdoor Ittehad, an alliance of four workers’ associations, has termed the move “an effort to ban trade union activities in the Railways which is in violation of the Constitution”.
An Ittehad leader, Sheikh Anwar, said the workers’ associations had joined hands to protest the PR administration’s alleged move aimed at shutting trains, privatise some profit-making ones and lay-off workers, instead of checking rampant corruption in the organisation.
“The administration wants to curtail up to 50 per cent trains and then start downsizing of workers, taking the plea they are a burden on the department,” he said.
He said PR labourers would not allow the move, adding that instead of resorting to downsizing or suspending trains operations, corruption in the organisation should be checked.
“No one can deprive workers of their constitutional right to freedom of association. Despite the passage of a year, the government has not released even a single rupee out of the Rs11.5 billion bailout package announced for railways revival.
Out of the approved allocation of Rs13 billion for the last fiscal, the railways got only Rs3.5 billion so far,” said Anwar and suggested that to overcome the PR deficit, the government should nab the corrupt bureaucrats, curtail unnecessary expenditures and inject money into the organisation.
He warned if the authorities continued to resort to such blatantly anti-worker steps, there would soon be an open confrontation between workers and the administration.—Staff Reporter
