The sufferings of Karachiites for the electricity shortages have doubled as the daily business of Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC) remained badly disturbed on second consecutive day by the ongoing protest of the company's employees over sacking of their colleagues.
The people who are already braving unscheduled power outages of eight to 10 hours are also facing the power breakdowns for technical faults, which remain unresolved for hours due to the non-availability of related staffs, sources said. Thousands of employees observed a sit-in and protest demonstration in front of the company's headquarter on Tuesday against the management of the company, which had recently sacked around 294 employees of the company for not performing their duties up to the mark.
Though the disturbance of routine/maintenance works in the company was adding the sufferings of the crisis-hit citizens, the management of the company was yet to take notice of the protest, sources said.
No one, from the administration, they said, has bothered to negotiate the protestors who in support of the sacked employees, were protesting in front of the company's office the whole day, while blocking the Abdullah Haroon Road and its surrounding roads near Zainab Market.
Talking to Business Recorder, Lateef Mughal, General secretary Peoples Workers Union of the company said that the protest would go on until the restoration of all the sacked employees.
He said the employees would stage the same sit in/protest in front of Karachi Press Club on Wednesday as the management was reluctant to reconsider its earlier decision of firing the poor employees without any solid justification. Earlier, during the protest, some of the protestors have entered the head office and stopped all staffs to perform their duty, sources at the company said.
Interestingly the CBA of the company was not supporting the way the members of the four unions were protesting against the management as it was disturbing the whole system of KESC causing more outages of power in the city, they said. The leaders of the protestors, while chanting slogans against Abraaj Capital, the new management of KESC, severely criticised the administration saying that it was trying to fire the poor employees who were the main asset of the public utility.
During the protest, which, was called by Joint Action Committee (JAC) of the company's four employees' unions also caused the closure of company's different sub offices with most of the 110 complain centres of the company. The members of different employees' union/association of the company who had gathered from different area like Gulistan -e-Jouhar, Gardan, Sadar etc raised voice against the management, as it was acting against the interest of both the company and its employees. It is to mention here that the company had recently fired almost 294 employees of different cadres for not improving their performance up to the mark.
Two sacked employee of the company, as the sources claimed had also died of heart attack after receiving their termination letters. The official sources at the company, while confirming the disturbance of the company's daily business, showed their ignorance that whether the management had taken notice of the developments or not.
Comments
Comments are closed.