HYDERABAD, July 14: The Pakistan Telecommunication Company’s decision to change the regular employees’ cadre from basic pay scale (BPS) to unified pay scale (UPS), which comes barely a few months after the introduction of voluntarily separation scheme (VSS), has raised fears among employees about job security.

The employees and their CBA union leaders see the move as a new way to sack the remaining staff after the company got rid of majority of personnel through VSS.

At present, the PTCL workers are under three categories, regular, those who were appointed prior to 1995 under the PTCL Act 1996 when Telegraph & Telephone Department (T&T) was converted into PTCL and New Compensation Pay Group (NCPG) covering employees who were appointed on contract basis in July 2005 onwards.

CBA leaders said that the PTCL whose 26 per cent shares were now owned by a UAE-based company announced packages under VSS, which thousands availed as they felt threatened in the company after change of management.

The leaders argued that at the time of privatisation they were given to understand by the Privatisation Commission and PTCL management that terms and conditions of regular employees, who were governed by Efficiency & Disciplinary Rules (E&D) 1973, would remain unchanged, their salaries would be increased as per ratio of increase in other government entities.

“But, nothing of the sort happened over the past three years. On the contrary what happened is nothing but a bolt from the blue in the shape of change of our cadre from BPS, which covers government employees to UPS that will exclusively govern under company regulations with entirely different set of terms and conditions,” CBA deputy chief organiser Pakistan Telecommunication Employees Union (PTEU), Shakeel Ahmed Khan told Dawn.

Regional General Manager of PTCL has received consent forms to be filled in by employees by July 21, 2008. The leaders and employees were more concerned about clause-6 of the UPS, indicating that “pensionable emoluments as on June 30, 2008 with an annual compoundable increase of eight per cent for number of years of service from July 1 till date of retirement shall be used for calculation of pension”.

Khan contended “UPS is launched without taking CBA on board. It seeks to change cadre of regular employees, who will become company’s employees with no guarantee about their job’s security.”

“Once our cadre is changed the company will have hire and fire powers although we didn’t opt for VSS because we thought since we are regular we should not fear about our job but the UPS has changed it all jeopardised our jobs,” said a senior employee showing form of UPS package.

A total of 968 employees have availed VSS in PTCL Hyderabad region and of the remaining 899, 724 regular and 175 NCPG employees work in the region.