Legal notice served on Grameen Telecom seeking dues of the employees

Staff Reporter :
A legal notice has been sent to the Grameen Telecom, an organisation owned by Nobel laureate Professor Dr Muhammad Yunus, asking to pay proportionate benefits to 47 former employees from
the workers’ profit participation fund as per the Labour Law within seven days.
Barrister H M Shanjid Siddiuqe, a Supreme Court lawyer, sent the notice on Sunday on behalf of 47 former employees of the company.
If the demand is not met, the employees will initiate further appropriate legal proceedings against the respondents, warned the notice.
The lawyer said his clients are workers as per the definition embodied in Section 233(1)(h) of the Bangladesh Labour Act, 2006, whereas the Grameen Telecom is a company according to Section 233(1)(c) of the said Act.
In spite of its legal obligations, Grameen Telecom did not establish any Participation Fund from October 2006 by complying with Section 232 of the Act and contributed its net profit for the financial years 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010 to the Participation Fund.
As a result, the employees did not get the proportionate benefits of the Participation Fund for the said financial years, read the legal notice.
The total amount of contribution which Grameen Telecom was mandated by law to contribute to the Participation Fund and workers’ welfare fund for the years 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009 is Tk. 85.73 million.
The Grameen Telecom authorities have already paid benefits of the Participation Fund to the workers for the years 2010 to 2021, but they have ignored the workers who have worked for the period from 2006 to 2010.
Earlier the organization paid Tk 4.37 billion to its 176 former employees as their dues through an out of court settlement. The employees received the money as they were entitled to get five percent of the net profit of the company as per the Labour Law.