Power project: Chinese company agrees to restore 900 labourers

MANSEHRA: The Chinese company working on the 880 megawatts Suki Kanari Hydropower Project has agreed to restore all 900 Pakistani labourers and pay them their five months salaries which couldn’t be paid to them because of emergency trigged by the coronavirus in the country.

“We have ended our protest as the high-ups of the Chinese company have inked an agreement to restore all sacked labourers and pay them their salaries,” Tahir Hussain Shah, the president of the labour union, told reporters after attending the talks with the company on Monday.

He said that labourers working on the project were terminated after they had gone into quarantine because of Covid-19 early this year. “We suspended our protest on June 2, this year after the company agreed to restore all 900 workers and pay us salaries but it signed an agreement now in this regard,” said the workers representative.

He said that they had threatened to come onto the streets last week as the company was reluctant to ink the agreement but now it honoured the commitments and they withdrew the protest call.

“The workers who would resume work, have to undergo screening for coronavirus twice. If found infected with Covid-19, they would be quarantined at least for 14 days and again tested. They would rejoin work if found negative,” said Tahir Hussain Shah.