HARIPUR, Feb 24: To protest against the sacking of six employees of the Telephone and Telegraph Colony Board, Haripur, female teachers of different educational institutions of the Telephone Industries of Pakistan (TIP) took out a procession and briefly blocked the Khanpur Road on Saturday.

The protesters, carrying placards inscribed with pro-workers and anti-management slogans, marched from the Estate Office to the Telephone Industries of Pakistan where they briefly blocked the Khanpur Road.

However, on the request of police officials, the protesters cleared the road for traffic. They chanted slogans against the managing-director of the TIP and other managerial staff and demanded their removal.

Speaking on the occasion, South Haripur Union Council Nazim Irshad Khan said that the profit-earning organisation had reached the verge of collapse and workers were being sacked from the TIP and its subsidiary organisations and uncertainty prevailed among workers.

“But local members of the National Assembly and Provincial Assembly are least bothered about the hardships of people,” he deplored.

He said the TIP management was bent upon sacking workers on the pretext of financial crisis. In fact, he pointed out, 150 officers of the TIP were a burden on the organisation rather than the poor workers who had served this state-owned unit for more than two decades.

The former president of the Employees and Workers Union of the TIP, Syed Abid Hussain Shah, condemned the sacking of the TIP employees and demanded that if the retrenchment was necessary, the TIP administration must reduce the size of the top management because each manager of the organisation was drawing a salary equal to 100 workers and these managers were the real burden on the factory.

The speakers threatened to launch a protest campaign against the TIP administration if the decision of the retrenchment was not withdrawn.

Later, the women protesters were joined in by labour leaders and male workers of the T&T Colony Board, TIP, and called on the local MNA and Minister of State for Finance Omar Ayub Khan.

They apprised him of the sacking of the TIP workers and sought his support in this regard. The minister assured the protesters of his support in the matter and promised to take up the matter with Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz.