No money on pay day: Families plan to stay in on Easter Sunday

Around 10,000 KMC employees plan to protest outside the Press Club .

KARACHI:

As she prepared to fast on Thursday morning, all Rehana Masih could think about was how her children will not have new clothes to wear on Easter.

The night before her husband had given her some bad news. He had told her that unlike last year or the year before, the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) would not be giving its 10,000 Christian employees a stipend.

“All around the globe, governments are helpful and facilitate its citizens in celebrating religious events and rituals,” she said. “In Pakistan, however, I feel helpless. I don’t know how to explain this to my children.” She added that although Easter is an important event in the Christian calendar, Rehana and her husband had decided to stay at home after Sunday Mass because they don’t feel like they can face their neighbours.

The president of the KMC’s Collective Bargaining Agent, Syed Zulfiqar Ali Shah, told The Express Tribune that their sanitation staff, nurses and paramedical staff had not received their salaries since March. The district South staff, he added, had not been paid for two months.

According to Shah, he had received some information about the March salary being given to grade 1 to 15 employees. “We are not hopeful as time has run out,” he said. “Tomorrow is Good Friday and Easter is on Sunday.” He added that they have decided to celebrate Easter sitting in front of Karachi Press Club with the 10,000 staff members who had not been paid.

The KMC’s Christian employees, Shah said, would gather outside the Press Club to protest after celebrating with their family and friends. They plan on to marching to Chief Minister House to register their protest and distress.

“Instead of giving the employees their April’s salary in advance, the KMC just said they will give salary for the month of March late,” he said. “How do they expect their employees to perform their duties well during an emergency situation?”

When contacted, the spokesperson of the Karachi Administrator, Ali Hassan Sajid, accepted that they had not given their Christian employees their April salaries in advance. He said this was due to a financial crunch at the KMC.

“We have released the salary for the month of March to our low-grade employees,” he said. “Due to the financial crunch, however, we will not be able to facilitate other employees on Easter.”

According to Sajid, there are eight festivities throughout the year - Ramzan, Eidul Fitr, Eidul Azha, Holi, Diwali, Christmas and Easter. He said that if they do not facilitate the Muslim and Hindu employees, how could they do so for the Christian ones.

“They work at the KMC as employees,” he said. “We treat them as employees. Not Christians, Hindus or Muslims. They should cooperate with us and try to understand that the department is facing a severe financial crisis.”

For the last two years the KMC has been going through one of the worst financial crises due to negligence from the Sindh government and bad financial decisions made by the corporation’s officials. Since 2012, many employees have been forced to celebrate Eid, Christmas and Easter without their salaries. Usually the provincial government releases a grant of roughly Rs500million for salaries, development projects and other expenditures.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 18^th, 2014.