PESHAWAR, Oct 6: The PWD Labour Union, NWFP, has called upon the government to withdraw its newly framed service rules for the works and services department and threatened to hold daily token strike from Monday if the demand is not met.

Speaking at a press conference at the Peshawar Press Club on Friday, union’s president Abdur Rab Sabir said the new rules enforced on Aug 8, 2006, were aimed recruiting incompetent relatives of politicians, bureaucrats and other influential people from backdoor.

He said the PWD Code provided a proper guidance for recruitment and promotion of PWD employees but the government had shelved the code with ulterior motives.

He said NWFP Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani himself was running the affairs of the department and was well aware of the demands of workers. He said the provincial government had not taken them into the confidence on the new rules a new two sets of service laws were in operation at the same time because the government had not repealed the PWD Service Code before enforced PWD Service Rules 2006.

The union leader opined that the new rules amounted to discouraging merit and fair play. Workers did not expect this type of exploitation and anti-worker steps from the MMA government which claimed to be a government of oppressed people. He observed that it was the first ever government which had ignored workers and provided all sorts of relief to industrialists.

With enactment of the new rules, he said, the government had deprived employees, who had passed exams in ‘B’ grade, of their right to departmental promotion.

Under the new rules, the government would recruit fresh civil diploma-holders in the department because most of them were relatives of politicians and bureaucrats.

Mr Sabir said all fresh recruitments were being made under the PWD Code in other three provinces and Azad Kashmir but the privilege-class in the NWFP was bent upon depriving poor jobseekers of equal opportunities.