Dhaka  - Several hundred workers of Bangladesh's leading voluntary organisation, Proshika, formed a human chain in front of its Dhaka headquarters Wednesday asking its chief to quit over corruption charges. "We want Kazi Faruk Ahmed [founding chairman of the organisation] to quit now. He brought a bad name for the organisation by using us (for) political purposes," said a director of Proshika, Sirajul Islam, who led the demonstration in the capital.

The employees gave the chairman a four-day ultimatum to resign, saying that otherwise they would form an alternative committee to run the organisation.

Faruk was accused of misusing the welfare fund of the employees, running his personal business with NGO funds, and using funds, manpower and the organisation's establishment to vie for parliamentary elections in December.

The 33-year old organisation, which runs development projects mostly with foreign donations, has over 6,000 paid employees and 2,800,000 activists across the country.

The demonstrators, who stood hand-in-hand by the main thoroughfare of Mirpur suburb for over two hours, also announced countrywide demonstration on Thursday.

They will also submit a memorandum to the district administrators seeking the government's support to realise their 19-point demands which included enhancement of employees' wages, scrapping the decision of a 25 per cent salary cut and payment of all dues to workers.

The leader of the demonstration called upon the authorities to take steps to remove Faruk and launch an investigation into his alleged corruption.(dpa)