Department in trouble: Water board staff unpaid since May

The salaries cannot be paid unless some employees are let go.

HYDERABAD:

The employees of the Water and Sanitation Agency (Wasa) fear that their department will collapse if it has to survive on its own financial resources.

Wasa is a subsidiary of the Hyderabad Development Authority (HDA) and has a workforce of more than 3,000 people.

Wasa is not able to pay its salaries regularly. “Wasa is doomed,” warned HDA’s peoples labour wing’s president, Khalid Qambrani. “We cannot survive without a subsidy, which was suspended in 1991.”

Unlike Hyderabad and Karachi, the water supply and drainage works in other cities of Sindh are managed by the town municipal administration. “Wasas in Lahore, Faisalabad, Gujranwala, Multan and Rawalpindi get an annual subsidy from the Punjab government,” said Qambrani. “We are demanding a similar grant for our organisation from the Sindh government.”

The general secretary of the labour wing, Muhammad Azam Rajput, explained that the Wasa employees have been working without salaries since May 2011. The revenue generated from utility bills is spent on maintenance. Rajput said that Wasa collected Rs21 million in bills last month, but salaries came to Rs31 million. Besides this, there were other expenditures which cost tens of millions of rupees.

Rajput said that WASA balances its deficit by taking loans and receiving financial assistance from its parent organisation, HDA. “We will take up the matter of excessive hiring with the local government minister,” said Rajput. “These contractual employees are a burden on the organisation.”

The agency has more than 2,000 workers employed either on contract or daily wages while the number of its permanent employees is less than 1,100. The financial problems of Wasa will only multiply unless the people with “unnecessary” jobs are let go, argued Rajput.

Wasa Managing Director Muhamamd Shafique Arain had revealed at a meeting with provincial minister Zahid Bhurgari the other day that Wasa does not have money to buy fuel for its generators. “Without functioning sewerage pumping stations, the sewage system will literally choke in many parts of the city during rains,” he warned.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 31^st, 2011.