KARACHI, Jan 22: The Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (Piler) has condemned the lay-off of around 4,500 Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC) workers by the management and demanded their immediate reinstatement.

In a statement issued here on Saturday, Piler executive director Karamat Ali described the alleged demands and conditions set by the KESC management for the reinstatement of the sacked employees as a blackmailing attempt by the utility.

He said the KESC was privatised on the conditions that it would invest in the power generation and would retrain all the employees.

“Each year it gets millions of rupees in subsidies and there is no justification for further benefits as a precondition of reinstatement of the sacked workers.”

After the passage of many years, the private owners of the utility had neither invested much in the company, nor expanded the power generation capacity, he said. Instead, it had been saving on fuel costs and regularly demanding subsidies and other financial benefits from the government which was unjustified because of poor KESC services to the customers, he said.

He expressed concern over the government's failure to take any immediate action to protect the rights of workers in the KESC that had resulted in sudden removal of thousands of workers.

“This action by the KESC management is tantamount to snatching the livelihood of the labourers who are already facing problems because of price hike and worsening law and order in the metropolis.”

He said that Piler and other labour organisations had opposed the privatisation of the public utilities, including the KESC in the past.

“The main argument at the time of the privatisation was improvement in services, which in the case of the KESC have been proved to be a lie because the peo-ple are suffering more than from the days when the KESC was in the public sector.”

“Frequent power failures and prolonged durations of loadshedding is common and there has been seen no improvement in KESC services.”

“Even the private owners have changed the management of the utility many times which is a proof of their failure to run the management efficiently,” he said.

He urged the government to cancel the privatisation of the company and take it back into the public sector because the private owners had failed to fulfil their commitments.—PPI