Rendered jobless: Employees of Population Welfare dept demand restoration

Threaten sit-in outside Imran Khan’s residence in Bani Gala if demands not met.

PESHAWAR: Terminated employees of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Population Welfare department on Monday threatened to stage a sit-in outside Bani Gala if their jobs are not permanently restored.

“A total of 560 employees across the province have been issued termination letters since June 2014 by the Population Welfare department,” Zeba Gul, who was working as an assistant in the department before her termination, said at a news conference at Peshawar Press Club. “We now have no option but to go on hunger strikes outside Bani Gala,” added Gul.

She said they were appointed in 2012 for the Annual Development Programme and were given salaries according to their payroll scale, but during the said period the provincial government introduced a policy whereby they were paid fixed salaries.



She maintained the Peshawar High Court (PHC) consequently declared the policy illegal and reinstated the payroll scale allowances. However, despite that, the population department on June 13 last year issued termination letters to them which she added was “an injustice”.

“We moved the PHC against our termination and on June 26 the court declared the termination null and void and issued an order for our early restoration, but to no avail,” she said. She added that every month the provincial government pays Rs0.2 million in rent for the vacant offices of the department.

Flanked by other terminated members of the population field staff working committee including Zikria, Seema, Ibara and others, Gul alleged the provincial adviser on population welfare Shakeel Ahmad had advertised more than 500 vacant posts in newspapers a few weeks ago and ignored the experienced employees.

She further complained the said adviser would appoint his party workers on the vacant posts which would be tantamount to violating merit and justice.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 3^rd, 2015.