Where it hurts most
Politicians are unwilling to show the commitment necessary to release the blocked arrears
It should never have come to this in the first place. When workers in water-starved Thar turned off the taps of reverse osmosis plants of the district on Oct 5 they must really mean business. Desperate circumstances call for desperate measures. Anger, however, is seldom a perfect antidote when attempting to resolve anything as complicated as wage arrears.
The pain of workers who have gone unpaid for four long months is perhaps understandable but surely it is unfair of them to punish all residents of the district for the Sindh government’s continued failure to cough up their salary arrears. Overall the issue is but a symptom of a bigger economic malaise facing both the country and the province for decades if not years as a whole. At the heart of the matter is utter mismanagement and malfunctioning of industrial units and public utilities.
Politicians are unwilling to show the commitment necessary to release the blocked arrears. Neither is much interest being shown by the captains of industry and trade. Any revival in the fortunes of the R O plants could only take place if the federal or provincial government decided to directly or indirectly intervene in the matter for the good of the people. The closure of 450 plants across Thar is a hardly a pleasing prospect for it means crippling a large segment of the district’s population and forcing them to rely on brackish and often toxic water of wells.
It could also mean exposing the population to renewed health threats — all because the authorities could not arrange for sufficient salaries to be paid in time. One epidemic, at the end of the day is not worth the risk at all. Sindh’s water woes are just too complicated and too grave to be left unattended for long. No time for painless or pointless actions now.
In order to set the country on the trajectory of growth, something immediate should be done to ameliorate workers’ plight by offsetting the backlog of their pay and emoluments.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 7th, 2018.
The pain of workers who have gone unpaid for four long months is perhaps understandable but surely it is unfair of them to punish all residents of the district for the Sindh government’s continued failure to cough up their salary arrears. Overall the issue is but a symptom of a bigger economic malaise facing both the country and the province for decades if not years as a whole. At the heart of the matter is utter mismanagement and malfunctioning of industrial units and public utilities.
Politicians are unwilling to show the commitment necessary to release the blocked arrears. Neither is much interest being shown by the captains of industry and trade. Any revival in the fortunes of the R O plants could only take place if the federal or provincial government decided to directly or indirectly intervene in the matter for the good of the people. The closure of 450 plants across Thar is a hardly a pleasing prospect for it means crippling a large segment of the district’s population and forcing them to rely on brackish and often toxic water of wells.
It could also mean exposing the population to renewed health threats — all because the authorities could not arrange for sufficient salaries to be paid in time. One epidemic, at the end of the day is not worth the risk at all. Sindh’s water woes are just too complicated and too grave to be left unattended for long. No time for painless or pointless actions now.
In order to set the country on the trajectory of growth, something immediate should be done to ameliorate workers’ plight by offsetting the backlog of their pay and emoluments.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 7th, 2018.