Plugin strips leading zeroes.

When I use thise code to capture phone numbers, the leading zero is stripped out. In our country, phone numbers may start with a zero. If someone enters 012345 it gets stripped to 12345. But if I enter it as (0)12345 it works.
This seems to be the case even if the field type is “textarea”. Any suggestions?

	$fields[] = new PMProRH_Field(
        "Telephone",              
        "text",                 
        array(
            "size"=>30,         
            "profile"=>true,    
            "required"=>false    
        ));