Privately-owned Karachi Electric Supply Company has become a 'state within state' and exploiting workers as well as consumers like a new edition of East India Company, alleged KESC Mazdoor Ittehad leaders addressing a press conference at Karachi Press Club here on Wednesday
Muhammad Ikhlaq Khan Chairman CBA said the KESC owners are bent to retrench workers and they are using different pressure tactics in this regard. He said workers are going to approach the labour court against the illegal termination of KESC workers. Secretary General Mazdoor Ittehad, Latif Mughal regretted that the KESC owners have disregarded for the laws of land and they break them whenever they want with a complete impunity. He said the sacking of KESC workers is an example of this haughty approach.
He said KESC threw out 4500 workers by using various pressure tactics in the name of VSS scheme and instead hired 8000 workers under third-party employment and outsourcing basis. He said the KESC owners claimed that the VSS was a voluntarily scheme, but they kicked out 2500 workers on 11 February who did not opt for the scheme.
He said that though KESC has inbuilt capacity to generate 2000 megawatts of electricity, but it was producing only 400 megawatts to pressurise and blackmail the government as well as Karachiites. He said this arm-twisting and blackmailing approach was recently witnessed in Lyari where electricity supply was suspended for 48 hours to punish Lyariites.
He said he and his two siblings were being expelled from their school due to default of fees for last 10 months, which their jobless father could not pay. Muhammad Ikhlaq Khan said the issue of retrenchments of KESC workers has now become a sensitive human rights issue as families of the sacked workers are facing starvation. He requested local and international human rights organisations, labour rights watchdogs, political and religious organisations and civil society to support the lingering struggle of the KESC workers and save them from brutal exploitation. He demanded of the president Asif Ali Zardari to annul the privatisation of KESC which he said was the pledge of slain PPP chairperson Shaheed Benazir Bhutto.