There is no end in sight to the row between Telco workers and businessman Richard Powell -- who hijacked a BTC van out of frustration two weeks ago.

Unionised Telco workers yesterday held a press conference to demand an apology from Mr. Powell and questioned why authorities had not addressed his actions toward the repair van.

Mr. Powell is the owner of Lines Food and Liquor Mart in Warwick. On March 2 of this year, he hijacked a BTC repair van in an attempt to force BTC to deal with problems with his phone line. Mr. Powell took a forklift and raised the van into the air, holding it hostage until a BTC executive would speak with him.

Workers are still "offended'' by Mr. Powell's actions and union representatives claimed, contrary to what has been reported, the matter is still an open sore.

"Contrary to what (Mr. Powell) stated to The Royal Gazette , the matter has not been smoothed over and squared away,'' said BIU president Derrick Burgess.

The affected Telco employees want "a written apology for this offensive behaviour'', he said.

The workers claim that, in addition to the forklift incident, Mr. Powell verbally abused a number of BTC staff including a 611 operator, an administrative assistant and two outside plant supervisors.

"We're not looking for Mr. Powell or anyone else to be prosecuted, but certainly they should warn him that this is against the law,'' Mr. Burgess said.

While some people in the community "may try to make light of the situation'', Mr. Burgess said such treatment of Telco workers should not be tolerated.

When contacted last night, Mr. Powell told The Royal Gazette that he had not yet seen the complete report of what happened at the press conference and wanted to reserve comment until he had.

But he said he did plan to make a statement about the matter.

Mr. Burgess said that Telco workers are not responsible for all the public's frustrations with the telephone company.

"I'd like to add that our members go out of their way to give the service required -- certainly we're not the management,'' he said.

But he denied knowing anything about copycat actions being taken.

BIU Telco division president Arnold Smith alluded to other incidents, however.

Mr. Smith said he had also taken the matter of an incorrect picture caption which ran in The Royal Gazette on March 10 up with editor Bill Zuill.

That caption accompanied a photo of union Telco employees and Mr. Powell with the famous forklift.

It said that BTC workers had gone to the Lines Food and Liquor Mart to apologise to Mr. Powell.

But, Mr. Smith said it happened the other way around and the workers had gone to the store to accept an apology from Mr. Powell.

Royal Gazette editor Bill Zuill said yesterday that union workers had approached the paper about a retraction.

"We were approached by union officers of the BTC after the picture appeared and did agree to look into the story. It did turn out that Richard Powell was also expected to apologise to the union for his actions,'' he said. "We then published a story which said that was the case and that Mr. Powell urged others not to engage in copycat actions.'' "On reflection, we should also have published a correction to the original caption to make the situation crystal clear,'' Mr. Zuill added.

The union officials also claim that the problems with Mr. Powell's line may have been the result of a computerised service used by the store.

The service, which is operated by Bermuda Financial Network, offers automatic cheque verification to retailers.

However BFN representative Alvin Wilson said that, if the problems had been with BFN service, it would have affected other stores.