PESHAWAR: The sacked employees of Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan (AWKUM) have described their termination from service as a sheer injustice and threatened to commit self-immolation in front of the provincial assembly if they are not reinstated immediately.
Speaking at a press conference at Peshawar Press Club on Wednesday, the employees’ action committee chairman Hazrat Ali said that services of a total of 272 permanent employees had been terminated in the university.
The action committee condemned the arrests of sacked employees by the local police under the pretext of firing on personal secretary to VC of the university and demanded of the provincial police chief to conduct an impartial inquiry into the case.
The sacked employees had challenged their termination in the Peshawar High Court, he said, claiming that the varsity administration was using delaying tactics by not appearing in the court.
Mr Ali said that the FIR of attack on PS Arbab Ijaz had been registered against unknown persons, but now the official had started accusing the sacked employees of involvement in the case.
He said that such allegations were meant to pressurise the sacked workers. He said that two employees had been arrested while several others were detained in habeas corpus in the name of investigation.
He alleged that the police had asked the sacked employees to inform them about their movement. He said that on the one hand they were rendered jobless, on the other they were being harassed for no fault of theirs.
The chairman of the ousted employees demanded of the KP IGP to order an impartial inquiry into the matter and if the firing incident turned out to be concocted the PS should be brought to book. “We swear that we are not involved in the incident,” he said and warned to commit self-immolation if not reinstated immediately.