MDA employees protest non-payment of salaries

Say MDA is committing ‘economic genocide’

KARACHI: Scores of Malir Development Authority (MDA) employees staged a protest outside the Karachi Press Club on Wednesday, demanding the payment of salaries due for the past 11 months and regularisation of their jobs.

The enraged protesters stated that MDA was “committing economic genocide” by depriving 1,600 contractual employees of their salaries for the past 11 months.

They claimed that MDA had misled them, asking them to sit Sindh Testing Service (STS) exams in order to be regularised and maintained that previously, MDA had regularised its employees in 2015 and 2016, but their status was again changed to that of contractual employees just after two months.

The protesters said that even those working in the department since 1997 were asked to take the STS tests, questioning why employees who had been working in MDA for the past 23 years were now required to give the test.

They demanded that the Sindh government ensure that MDA complied with instructions outlined in notices issued to it by various government agencies and warned that they would march towards the Chief Minister House if their demands were not met.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 12^th, 2020.