Palli Bidyut Samity halts movement on govt assurance

Employees united under Palli Bidyut Samity (PBS) have postponed their “complete shutdown” movement aimed at enforcing indefinite power outage across much of the country's rural areas, the organisation’s coordinator Abdul Hakim told reporters Thursday.

The association’s members have paused their demonstrations after receiving assurances of meeting their demands from Chief Adviser’s Special Assistant Mahfuz Alam, Abdul Hakim said.

The association has agreed to give the government time to consider meeting its demands, Abdul Hakim confirmed adding Mahfuz has assured him of stopping the legal actions that were taken against PBS staff.

Earlier on Thursday, the association had given the interim government 12 hours to meet at least four demands: firstly, reinstating 20 recently sacked officials, and withdrawing cases against 10 officials; secondly, removing the Rural Electrification Board (REB) Chairman Major General SM Zia-Ul-Azim from his post.

For months, they have been asking authorities for meeting two other demands: removing the discriminations Palli Bidyut Samity (PBS) staff face when compared with the benefits afforded to REB employees, and regularising the employment status of temporary PBS workers.

If their demands were not met within the given deadline, they threatened to enforce “complete shutdown” and even warned of marching towards the capital.

To give a clue of the impact of their movement, staff of 61 PBS units across the country briefly halted electric supply to parts of the country’s rural areas, causing sufferings to lakhs of consumers.

The staff had observed work abstentions in May and July to meet their demands.