HARIPUR, Jan 8: At least 40 workers of a food products manufacturing unit in the Hattar industrial estate were dismissed from the service on Wednesday without serving show-cause notices on them.

The sacked employees also included those who had 4-10 year service record with the factory, sources said. However, the factory administration denied having terminated any workers from the service.

According to a group of the affected workers, who visited the Haripur Press Club on Wednesday evening, they had been working in Coronet Foods Hattar, a franchise of the English Biscuit Manufacturers (EBM), in different categories for the last several years. Their service period, they claimed, ranged between four and 10 years.

They said the factory administration had asked them to a sign new contract in the last week of December. "When we sought to know the new terms and conditions, the administration declined," said a worker, Abdul Malik. About 40 workers who refused to sign the contracts were denied entry into the factory, he added.

He said that according to the new contract, workers were bound to work 12 hours a day instead of eight hours and that too in poor working conditions prevailing at the Hattar industrial estate.

Mr Malik said the administration neither issued termination letters to the sacked workers nor reimbursed the benefits they were legally entitled to avail.The workers vowed to move a court of law to seek justice under the labour laws and the Industrial Relations Ordinance 2000.

Meanwhile, factory managing director Taufiq Ahmed Siddiqui, when contacted, rejected the allegation. He said that as the labour contract had been given to a new party, all the old workers were asked to renew their contracts.

They were neither dismissed from the job nor their working hours or other conditions had been changed, he said. The factory official said that actually the workers were being offered new facilities, like with pay gazetted holidays and increased rates of overtime.

SUICIDE: A young man, Khurram Shehzad, committed suicide by strangulating himself here on Wednesday, family sources said.