LAHORE, July 17: The PTCL United Workers Alliance has urged Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry to take suo motu notice of non-payment or partial payment of salaries to some 850 or so employees for the last one year.

Some 300 employees have not been paid even a single rupee while another 550 have been getting one-third of their wages since last Ramazan for actively participating in the struggle for their rights, alliance leader Rana Hasan, accompanied by Malik Maqbool, Hammad Qureshi and Malik Habib told Dawn on Sunday.

Rana Hasan said medical facilities to the `condemned’ employees were being denied while 300 of them had also been evicted from their official residences. The PTCL had some 66,000 employees when its privatisation process was initiated in 2005 with the promise that there would be no lay-offs. However, some 41,000 either left or were forced to quit the organisation.

“The remaining 25,000 have been performing their duties at least 12 hours a day without availing their weekly days-off and with denial of their legal rights like increase in salaries in commensurate with government’s notifications. Even the pension scheme of workers, employed under 1996 package, had been abandoned while retired employees were getting half of their pension.

Malik Maqbool said hurdles were being created for the grant of 12 per cent shares of the company to employees under the Benazir Stock Option Scheme which the employees of other privatised departments had been given. Titles of administrative posts had been changed and Unified Pay Scales again enforced to deny promotions to non-gazetted employees.

Hammad Qureshi said some 8,740 workers on daily wages were made permanent under the New Compensation Pay Grade (NCPG) scheme. But it was temporary and the management withdrew it as it wanted to embezzle Rs9 billion or so on account of their old-age benefits.

He appealed to the chief justice to order the PTCL management to immediately clear the arrears of all 850 employees, give Basic Pay Scale to all workers performing duties under NCPG for the last 15 to 20 years after regularising the service of all daily wage workers. After regularisation, they should be given revised pay scales of 2005 and arrears since then.