PESHAWAR: The sacked employees of Cooperative Bank in Khyber Pakht-unkhwa have demanded of the government to reinstate their services along with provision of all benefits, otherwise they will besiege the building of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly for claiming their rights.

Talking to mediapersons here on Saturday, Cooperative Bank Officers Association’s general secretary Mohammad Humayun said that the bank shown in loss was closed down in 2001 and about 233 employees had been terminated without any notice.

He said that the bank was earning profit, but it was declared in loss and as a result the poor employees suffered as they could not join any other government service.

Threaten to besiege building of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly

Mr Humayun pointed out that the bank had been restored in 2011 after legislation by the federal government, but the employees were not reinstated so far.

He said that of the terminated employees at least 100 were still in a position to do the bank job while others should be given pension. The restoration of Cooperative Bank, he said, had created a ray of hope for the workers, but another summary had been moved to Chief Minister Pervez Khattak for liquidation of the bank again. He said that the chief minister could not interfere in affairs of the bank under clause 43-II of the 1925 Act.

Mr Humayun alleged that an assistant, Khalid Mumtaz, was appointed general manager of the bank by the provincial government, who lacked banking experience. He said that the liquidation plan appeared for the second time when the employees exposed corruption of high officials of the bank.

He alleged that Rs800 million had been allocated for the Cooperative Bank, but it was not utilised due to inability of the provincial cooperative department of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. He demanded of the provincial government to immediately scrap the liquidation plan and reinstate services of all employees.

Published in Dawn, January 21st, 2018