Employees withdraw all cases against Grameen Telecom 

The workers' union of Grameen Telecom yesterday withdrew a case seeking liquidation of the company owned by Nobel Laureate Dr Muhammad Yunus after it agreed to pay the money it owes the employees.

The union of workers had filed the case at the High Court on 7 February 2022 against Grameen Telecom for not paying around Tk250 crore dues to 176 sacked workers. 

Advocate Yusuf Ali, who represented the workers, told The Business Standard, "Grameen Telecom has agreed to pay the dues to the workers. Currently, the company is making calculations for paying off the dues. They may pay the workers in a couple of days."

He said Grameen Telecom asked the workers to withdraw all the cases filed against them as a condition for payment.

"That is why the case filed seeking liquidation of the company was withdrawn from the single-member bench of Justice Muhammad Khurshid Alam Sarkar on Monday. The court has been informed that the matter is being settled," said Yusuf Ali.

The workers have also withdrawn 104 cases filed in a Dhaka labour court for recovering these dues, he said.

In a notice signed by Grameen Telecom Managing Director Mohammad Ashraful Hassan, 99 workers were laid off at once without any prior conversation with the union of workers.

The High Court summoned Dr Yunus in this regard after 28 of the discharged workers filed a petition against that notice.

On 4 April 2021, the court directed the company to reappoint those workers.

On 12 September 12 last year, Labour Inspector Arifuzzaman of the Department of Inspection for Factories and Establishments filed a case with Dhaka's third labour court against Dr Yunus and three others for violating labour laws.

Other accused in the case were Ashraful Hasan, managing director of Grameen Telecom, and its directors Nurzahan Begum and Shahjahan.