Non-payment of wages: Agri dept employees block flow of traffic

The protest by hundreds of workers of the department's On-farm Water Management wing started on Thandi Sarak.

HYDERABAD:

The movement of traffic on an arterial road of Hyderabad remained suspended on Tuesday as contractual employees of Sindh agriculture department staged a sit-in protest at the entrance of the bureaucracy's regional headquarters, Shahbaz Building.

The protest by hundreds of workers of the department's On-farm Water Management wing started at around 11am on Tuesday on Thandi Sarak.

Mumtaz Ali Panhwar, representing the protesters, said that they will withdraw from only one side of the two-way road for Tuesday night. However, he warned, they will block the entire road again by Wednesday morning if they are not approached by the government with a credible assurance.

According to him, some 640 staff have been working in the wing on contract basis for the last 19 years. But, they have not even been paid their salaries for the last six months. He claimed that the Sindh secretary agriculture had assured them during their protest in Karachi on January 22 that unpaid salaries of all the employees will be released immediately.

He lamented that the promise is yet to materialise as the staff and their families starve. Panhwar said, they also want a minimum salary of Rs37,000 for the lower staff after their regularisation. He said they will not end their protest unless their unpaid salaries are released and their demands are met.

During the sit-in, the protesters were engaged in heated arguments by some citizens who were annoyed by blocking of one of the busiest roads in the city. The people who wanted to visit Shahbaz Building for various official works could also not get access to that compound of the buildings where the offices of dozens of government departments, including the commissioner, DIG and DC function.