MULTAN, Jan 8th: Trade Unionists on Sunday staged a demonstration under the auspices of Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign (PTUDC) to condemn the sentence of 300 lashes and four months behind bars awarded to unpaid workers for protesting fortheir rights in Saudi Arabia. They shouted slogans against Saudi Government for abusing the labour laws and non-payment of wages to their foreign workers for the last Seven months. The demo was led by Nadeem Pasha and joined by Zeeshan Butt, Nadir Gopang, Sachal Sarmast, Tauseef Ahmed, Aslam Ansari, Malik Nasim Labar, Malik Farooq, Sumeer, Nausheer Khan, C omrade Ali, Socrat Lund, Siddique Saeed,Ghulam Abbas, RanaIzhar Khalid, Shehryar Baloch, Zain Naqvi, RahimBakhsh andComrade Ishaq. They demanded immediate suspension of sentence awarded by Saudi court, payment of wages to all unpaid workers, All detained workers must be released forthwith and Government should break diplomatic ties with KSA till therelease of all workers. All Pakistanis detained in Saudi Arabia be released and sent them back to home. Nadeem Pasha said ," Protest against KSA would be staged across the country to draw the attention of Saudi Government towards this injustice. He said that some of the protesters were reportedly sentenced to four months in prison and 300 lashes for destroying public property and inciting unrest during the demonstration. Others were given a lesser sentence of 45 days’ detention.Workers employed by the Binladin Group and Saudi Oger were left waiting for their wages after a collapse in oil revenues left the kingdom unable to pay the private firms it had contracted to undertake major building projects.
