Watercourse employees demand permanent jobs, come under teargas shelling

KARACHI: Police resorted to baton-charging and teargas shelling when employees of the National Programme for the Improvement of Watercourses (NPIW) tried to take their protest from the Karachi Press Club to the red-zone, which contains Chief Minister House and Governor House, on Thursday.

“We were peacefully protesting for our legal rights,” said the chairman of NPIW employee association, Mir Waqar. “We decided to encamp here until we were offered permanent job offer letters, but the police took way our tents and we do not have the money to replace them.”

Waqar claimed that 100 NPIW employees were arrested and many others were wounded in the police attack.

However, ASP Usman Bajwa rejected Waqar’s claims and said that the police has detained 20 people and will register cases against them for entering the high security red-zone.

“We resorted to teargas shelling as we did not want any physical altercation with the mob,” said Bajwa. He said that the police tried to negotiate with the protesters but to no avail. “We asked their leaders to come and talk with the authorities but they turned down the offer and made an effort to enter the red-zone.”

Waqar said that NPIW has nearly 1,800 contract employees, including 1,000 graduate engineers, in Sindh, who are waiting to permanent jobs since 2005.

The NPIW was started by the federal government to conserve water for irrigation in 2004.

Waqar claimed that after the passage of the 18th constitutional amendment, governments of all provinces except Sindh had given permanent jobs to their NPIW employees.

“We established over 2,000 watercourses in Sindh in the last seven years, but have been unpaid since the last two months,” said Saleh Mohammad, a NPIW employee. The protesters said that they will start holding hunger strikes as well if their demands are not met.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 24^th, 2012.