KARACHI, Feb 1: A large number of workers of the Pakistan Steel blocked the road leading to the Steel Mills for over eight hours late on Thursday night.

They opened it after the management accepted one of their demands and agreed to listen to their other grievances.

The road connecting the steel mills and the national highway remained blocked from 5 pm on Thursday evening and opened at around 2 am on Friday morning.

The management gave in to the workers’ immediate demand of restarting the buses on various routes from which the service had been withdrawn recently.

The management also agreed to listen to the other grievances of the workers and a meeting between the representatives of the workers and the management would be held soon.

The road was opened and the agreement between the workers and the management reached on the intervention of police, rangers, local Nazims and other representatives.

The sources in the labour said that the management was threatening to sack over 1,200 workers — it was rather forcing them to opt for the voluntary retirement scheme.

Another issue was that the management had stopped operating many buses for many areas of the city and had asked the workers to shift to Steel Town. The step was being opposed by the workers many of whom were facing transport problem while coming to and retuning from the Mills for the past many days.

The workers were also demanding the sack of the Steel Mills chief, Col Afzal, alleging that he had not been able to sell the Steel Mills products in the market, due to which the income of the Mills had declined considerably.

The management sources said that after the government had given a go-ahead to the management’s financial and manpower restructuring policy on May 20, 1999, the management wanted to bring the workers’ strength down from over 20,000 to 12,500.

A voluntary retirement scheme was introduced and over 7,000 employees had availed themselves of the facility so far, bringing the strength to around 13,500. Over 1,000 other employees still had to go.

Thursday was the last day for opting for the VRS, and the employees probably feared that now the rest of the employees might be sacked on flimsy grounds.

Though the management has reportedly paid over Rs4 billion on benefits (one time payment) to the outgoing workers, it is saving over Rs1.1 billion a year on the salaries that it might have paid, if the workers had not opted for the VRS.

The management, however, maintained that the main reason for not being able to sell the products was the import duty on similar products due to which the prices of imported goods were lower than those of the Steel Mills products.