KARACHI, Feb 13: Various trade unions of the municipal workers, criticizing the proposed privatization of the solid waste management system in the city, has said that if the proposal was not scraped by Feb 15 they would launch protest demonstration from Feb 16.

The decision to this effect was taken at a meeting of the Municipal Workers Trade Union Alliance – that comprises 35 workers unions – held at the KMC Workshop on Monday. The alliance is headed by labour leaders Kaneez Fatima, Fareed Awan, Zulfiqar Shah and others.

After the meeting, Mr Awan told Dawn that owing to the proposed privatization over 2,000 workers would be affected. . He said that none of the contractors who have applied for the job has any previous experience, which was a prerequisite.

He said that such experiences had been done more than once, but had to be abandoned. So keeping in view the past record, it could be visualized that the experience would fail this time also. He said if the decision on privatization was not reversed, the workers would launch a protest movement from Feb 16.