WASA workers threaten to deprive citizens of water

Agency says it has no funds to pay salaries due to outstanding bills

HYDERABAD: As the financial health of the Water and Sanitation Agency (Wasa) in Hyderabad remains in doldrums, unpaid workers have restarted fresh protests.

Padlocking the offices of Wasa on Wednesday, the workers repeated the threat of stopping water supply and drainage if their three-month unpaid salaries and pensions were not released ahead of Eidul Azha.

"For several years, the Hyderabad Development Authority [HDA, parent organisation of Wasa] has kept the workers deprived of their salaries in the months ahead of Eidul Fitr and Eidul Azha," claimed Mohammed Aslam Abbassi, general secretary of HDA's Mehran Workers Union.

"If we aren't paid before Eid, we will be compelled to block supply of water to citizens and the drainage system," he warned, adding that the HDA authorities will be responsible for the situation if they went to that extreme.

Wasa Managing Director Masood Jumani tried to pacify the protesters by assuring them that the agency was ready to pay their one-month salary and pension. However, the offer was rejected.



"We have been unable to recover dues from private and public consumers. This is the reason we couldn't pay the salaries and pensions regularly," Mohsin Jaffry, finance director of WASA, told the media. According to him, Rs2.4 billion arrears of the agency are due on various departments of the Sindh government and local government alone.

There are around 650 regular employees of Wasa and around 2,000 contractual ones. The agency requires over a monthly amount of Rs60 million under the head of salaries and pensions in addition to around Rs10 million for other expenditures.

Taking notice of the perpetual issues which time and again provokes the contractual workers of Wasa to trouble citizens so that their demands are met, the Supreme Court-mandated water commission intervened in the matter earlier this year. Justice (retd) Amir Hani Muslim, while directing Wasa officials to increase the recovery, ordered the Sindh government to make monthly payments to the agency so that its employees could be paid.

"In the given circumstance ... [Sindh] finance department is directed to adjust salary and pension of the employees at source by adjusting the outstanding [amount payable to the authorities] of different government departments," the commission had ordered in February. The provincial government, which has repeatedly complained of Wasa's overbilling, was asked to directly deposit the salary and pension in the employees' bank accounts.



However, in the subsequent meetings between officials of the Sindh government and Wasa, it was decided that the former would make a monthly payment to the agency for onward disbursement to the employees. Initially, a sum of over Rs26 million was approved that was later increased to Rs33.7 million. To sort out the problem of excess billing, it was decided that Wasa would install meters in the premises of its consumer government departments.

The monthly payment, however, reportedly stuck again in June as the two sides could not make progress on the installation of meters for the government consumers. Wasa officials contend that the provincial government's departments were supposed to submit demand draft which they have not done so far.

The water commission had also directed Wasa to install meters at the vehicle service stations but the agency has so far failed to comply with the order.