HYDERABAD, Nov 5: Unrest prevailed among the employees of the Pakistan Telecommunications Company (PTCL) following circulation of a form, requiring them to give their particulars regarding their families, education, training choice of stations/city, etc.

The employees are apparently frightened to fill the form ascribing it to any expected downsizing of the department or voluntary separation scheme which was announced in 1998.

According to the form handed over to Dawn by a union leader, each member is required to fill eight columns, mentioning the employee’s name, choice of station of employee, his aptitude/field of specialization, qualification, training record (local/foreign), dependents (family members) and service record.

The employees believed that the PTCL was collecting data of its employees in order to announce any voluntary separation scheme on the basis of golden handshake scheme in order to downsize the department.

The employees said that the form was distributed among all PTCL employees.

There were also reports that the employees would be disciplined and their salaries would be withheld if they did not fill in the form and return it to the administration of the department concerned.

Besides, there was no proper guidance or any covering letter given to the employees on how to fill the forms.

The general secretary, PTCL, Employees Unity, STR-I, Shakeel Ahmed, accused the PTCL administration of misguiding the employees regarding the filling of forms as they were not told whether it was optional and whether they were interested in being relocated.

He criticised the PTCL management for creating harassment among the employees saying that there should be proper guidance regarding filling of forms.

He said some exercises had been conducted by the departments on more than one occasion in the past, and added that the employees were right in apprehending their retrenchment.

When the general manager, PTCL, STR-I, was contacted, he said that it was not a new exercise as it was in progress for the last two years.

He said that as far as the question of employees’ retrenchment was concerned, he was not in a position to comment.