KARACHI, March 12: The All Pakistan Trade Unions’ Organization and the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal on Sunday demanded immediate reinstatement of sacked employees of the Habib Bank Limited.

APTUO’s Acting President, Habibuddin Junedi, at a meeting held at the office of the Workers Front, said that the sacking of some 2,500 non-clerical cadre employees of the HBL in one go was the worst kind of injustice. He demanded their immediate reinstatement.

He said until December 1996, the number of workers in the HBL was about 22,000, but under a well-planned conspiracy, more than 20,000 of its employees had been rendered jobless during the last few years in the garb of so-called golden handshakes, cruel scheme of voluntary retirement and forced retrenchments.

He said they were against privatization from day one, as it was the number one enemy of the people of Pakistan.

He said time had proved that the real aim of privatization in Pakistan was not industrial progress, but to sell national institutions and make the country a grazing ground for multinationals.

He urged the workers to remain untied and carry on their peaceful struggle against the menace of privatization.

Separately, MMA MPAs in Sindh Assembly Nasrullah Shajji, Hameedullah Advocate and Muhammad Younis Barai, in their joint statement strongly slated the retrenchment of HBL workers.

They said the economic policies of dictators were further increasing joblessness and poverty in Pakistan.

They said the forced sacking of workers was tantamount to an economic genocide of thousands of families.

They recalled that prior to privatization, the buyers of the HBL had promised not to render a single worker jobless, but they had now sacked some 2,500 employees with a single stroke of pen. They said it was sheer injustice and the worst form of atrocity.

They said poverty, joblessness and price hike had already made the lives of the poor masses bitter, and incidents of suicide and self-immolation were becoming an order of the day.

They regretted that instead of providing relief to poor people, the rulers were further increasing the poverty and joblessness in the country through privatization.—PPI