SIALKOT, Sept 2: The newly-formed "Democratic Founders Group" in the Sialkot Chamber of Commerce and Industry has received positive response from exporters with regard to pressing of the SCCI management to hold its annual elections instead of selecting the office-bearers.

This was stated by SCCI's Democratic Founders Group president Suhail Khawar Mir while talking to newsmen here. He claimed that the oppressed SCCI members had started pressing the management to conduct the annual elections by giving up the tradition of making nominations of the office-bearers.

Mr Mir alleged that the SCCI had been hijacked by some monopolists for the last several years as the members were deprived of their very basic right to vote. He, however, pledged that the DFG would continue its struggle for promoting the democratic norms and values in the SCCI besides enabling the oppressed members to use their basic right to vote.

The DFG, he said, had launched a campaign for making possible of holding fair, free and transparent annual elections in the SCCI every year. Talking to newsmen, DFG vice-president Malik Sadiq Awan said that the annual elections in the SCCI had not been held for the last 14 years. He claimed that some monopolists remained busy in making nominations of the office bearers for their vested interests.

He said that the Democratic Founders Group would contest the upcoming SCCI annual elections which were scheduled to be held on Sept 21. Meanwhile, the DFG expressed its dissatisfaction over the committees formulated by the SCCI management for the scrutiny of voters and nomination papers of the candidates.

On this occasion, a large number of the DFG members unanimously passed a resolution, urging the SCCI management to include representatives of the DFG in all the existing scrutiny committees. Sajjad Dar, Muhammad Afzal Awan and Muhammad Ashraf Bhutta of the DFG also addressed the press conference.