HYDERABAD, May 6: The Pakistan Wapda Hydro Electric Central Labour Union has condemned the forced retirements and demotions of Hesco line superintendents on the pretext of high line losses.

In a joint statement issued here on Monday, the union’s Sindh president, Mohammad Iqbal Kaimkhani, joint secretary Mohammad Azam Khan and Line Superintendents’ Forum chairman Alladin Kaimkhani said that executive engineers and SDOs were responsible for line losses but the Hesco administration was making the line superintendents scapegoats.

They demanded of the Wapda chairman and the Hesco chief executive to reinstate the affected line superintendents.

They threatened that if the demand was not accepted in 48 hours, the workers would stage a sit-in outside the Hesco headquarters.

The labour leaders said that peaceful protest of Hesco employees should not be construed as their weakness since they were capable of resorting to other methods of protest.

Meanwhile, Hesco chief executive Tariq Arshad said that due to high losses 24 line superintendents had been sent packing.

He was speaking to presidents of chambers of commerce and industry of the interior of Sindh at the Hyderabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry here on Monday.

He said that in the upper Sindh, line losses were 74 per cent.

Mr Tariq termed the areas of Dadu and Naushahro Feroze a “permanent headache for him” and deplored that 850 meters had been destroyed in Naudero, disrupting the entire power supply system.