KARACHI, Feb 7: The KESC management's bid on Monday to persuade some of the employees to call off their fast-unto-death did not succeed as the employees continued their protest against the privatization of the utility and their four colleagues also joined them on Monday.
A two-member team, comprising Col Mushtaq and Col Aslam, from the management side, visited the hunger strikers' camp outside the Karachi Press Club and urged them to call off their protest. They told the workers that the KESC chief, Brig Tariq Sadozai, had approached the Privatization Commission chief, Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, and conveyed to him their demands.
They quoted Mr Shaikh as saying that under the privatization agreement, trade union activities in the KESC would be restored within six months. The team, however, failed to convince the workers.
Two of the four workers who joined the hunger strikers on Monday are Mohammad Javed and Gul Mohammad. The two others, Aslam Samoon and Javed Nasir, observed a 12-hour hunger strike with them. The group of five workers who had initiated the fast-unto-death earlier are Akhlaq Khan, Usman Baloch, Mohammad Hussain, Mohammad Jehangir and Akber Korejo. Condition of some of them is stated to be deteriorating.
Political and labour leaders, addressing a large number of workers gathered at the camp, warned of an intensified campaign if their demands were not met. They said they would also stage protest demonstrations at the Saudi diplomatic missions in Karachi and Islamabad.
They also urged the Saudi government not to allow its citizens to get involved in the unfair privatization deals being stricken by, what they called, 'agents of imperialists' in Pakistan.
Repeating their demand that the process of KESC privatization be reversed immediately, they condemned Islamabad for accepting the bid of Rs1.65 per share as against the market value of Rs7 per share.
Pointing out that the management could have fetched three to four times higher price of the share than its market rate, they alleged that acceptance of a bid as low as 20 per cent of the value indicated that some sort of kickbacks might have been received by someone at the helm of the affairs. They also demanded that a high-level inquiry into the whole process be instituted.
They also slated the government for misleading masses by claiming that current power tariff had been frozen for seven years. Contrary to the claim, they added, the new party had been allowed to revise the tariff keeping in view the fuel prices.
They demanded restoration of trade union activities in the KESC and regularization of all contractual employees.