A group of employees of Citycell yesterday sued five top officials and three owners, including Chairman Morshed Khan and Chief Executive Officer Mehboob Chowdhury, over unpaid salaries and allowances ofTk 1.5 crore.
Five employees of the out-of-service mobile phone operator filed separate cases against them with the labour court in Dhaka as they have not been paid since September last year.
The court recorded the cases and also ordered the top officials and the board members to appear before it on October 4, said Tipu Sultan, head of communications of Citycell and one of the plaintiffs.
He has made a claim ofTk 31.52 lakh in unpaid salaries and other benefits for the last 11 months.
Morshed Khan, a senior BNP leader and
former foreign minister, heads the board of Pacific Bangladesh Telecom Ltd, which uses Citycell as its brand name. Nasrin Khan, Khan's wife and a director, and Asghar Karim, also a director of PBTL, have been named in the cases.
Officials who have been named in the cases are Chief Financial Officer Tariqul Hasan and provident fund trustees Mahfuzur Rahman, Nishat Ali and AB Sarkar.
Citycell employees Tipu Sultan, Kazi Ruhul Quddus, Hasan Mahmud, Sadik Milon and AKM Ahsanul Azad filed the cases.
"As we had no registered union at Citycell we needed to file cases individually," said Sultan, adding that 25 more individuals would file cases forsimilar reasons.
The Citycell Employees' Association said at least 15 employees served legal notices over back pays a month ago but have received no response from the management.
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Some 630 people still work at Citycell. The dues of 250 of them have been cleared partially. The rest have received nothing, said a leader of the association. The Citycell chairman,
his wife and Mehboob Chowdhury have already been sued by the AntiCorruption Commission for allegedly embezzling over Tk 383 crore of AB Bank between 2011 and 2015.
The mobile operator went out of
service last year for failing to pay hundreds of crores of taka to the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission. However, its spectrum allocation was reinstated last month following a court order.