Lucknow:(IANS) Former employees of Associated Journals Ltd., publishers of the now defunct National Herald, Navjivan and Qaumi Awaz, on Saturday said they would stage a sit-in demonstration at the office gate here from January 18 to 21 against the “step-motherly treatment” meted out to them by the management.

Before the sit-in, a general body meeting of the employees will be held at the office gate on January 16. This was decided at a meeting of the former employees union presided over by its president Kazim Hussain on Saturday.

In a statement issued by union general secretary Dilip Sinha, the Lucknow employees are demanding payment by the same formula that was applied for payment to their counterpart in Delhi which was promised by the management at the time of final payment  to them in January 1999.

Besides, the registered office of the company in Lucknow was closed in 1999, earlier than the branch office in Delhi which stopped publication of the paper in 2008, and the Lucknow employees are also demanding wages for this period.

Sinha said the meeting also demanded re-launch of the three newspapers and urged the chairman of Associated Journals Ltd. to hold a meeting with the union on their demands before the meeting of shareholders slated for January 21.