Nobel peace laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus and his three Grameen Telecom Company colleagues are set to file an appeal with the Labour Appeal Tribunal on Sunday, challenging a Labour Court verdict.
The Labour Court in its verdict sentenced them to six months in jail on three counts of charges, including one for not to regularise jobs of apprentice workers.
The other two charges include GTC’s failure to create a workers’ participation fund and a workers’ welfare fund and to deposit 5 per cent of the profits to the workers welfare fund and not giving the annual leave, encashment of leave, and cash payment against leave to the workers or employees.
Yunus’ lawyer Abdullah Al Mamun said on Saturday that the appeal sought acquittals of Yunus, the chairman of Grameen Telecom, three other convicts–GTC former managing director Ashraful Hasan, and its directors, Nur Jahan Begum and Mohammad Shahjahan, citing 25 reasons in the appeal.
Mamun said that Yunus and his three colleagues would submit a prayer to the Labour Appeal Tribunal for extension of their 30 days bail, granted earlier by the labour tribunal on January 1.
The tribunal granted them the bail without sending them to jail custody on the condition that they would appeal in the period.
According to procedures, the Labour Appeal Tribunal will notify the Department of Inspection of Factories and Establishments to appear before the appeal tribunal in connection with the appeal, Mamun said.
The appeal tribunal will later accept the appeal for hearing, he contended.
On September 9, 2021, the department inspector, SM Arifuzzaman, who later died, filed the case with the Dhaka Labour Court 3 against Professor Yunus and his three colleagues as they were involved in running the affairs of the GTC.
Lawyer Mamun termed the case as politically motivated.
