Another hunger strike?

More than 200 employees of the “Nakhchivan Automobile Transport” Open Joint Stock Company intend to launch a hunger-strike if their demands are not complied. The drivers want the government to return the Nakhchivan bus terminal to the company and allow it to fulfill the agreement with Turkey’s Igdir province signed till 2004.

Head of the company’s personnel department Jafar Alaskarov told a news conference in Baku Monday that the current manager of the Nakhchivan bus terminal had illegally taken it over from the company and cancelled the routes to Igdir that had been executed by 5 buses. 230 people have thus been laid off. According to Mr. Alaskarov, appeals to the Nakhchivan government have yielded no fruit and the dismissed workers converged to the Nakhchivan bus terminal this morning awaiting

a decision on their demands.*