The 1,200 former workers in Shaikh Zayed’s Department of Personal Affairs (DPA) in Pakistan – called the Darul Khasa – and their families are now living in desperately poor conditions, said Mir Asif Ibrahim, their informal spokesman. After the Shaikh’s death, the DPA was closed in November 2006 with hundreds laid off without pension or gratuity, said Ibrahim.
“A large number of them are over 50 and cannot do any other job. After getting a long service from these people, they have given them peanuts,” he said. “Arab Shaikhs are known for their generosity but in our case, it is the opposite.”
Muhammad Ilyas said he had worked as a driver for the DPA for 17 years, but now he had nothing. “I never thought that there would be such a miserable climax to my job,” he said.
Ibrahim said the former employees had contacted the adviser to the UAE government in Pakistan, Chaudhry Munir. “Our grievances were not addressed, so we decided to protest and hold camps in Lahore and Karachi,” he said.
But Munir said the employees had actually been paid three times more than normal. According to the rules, the amount of gratuity due is calculated as one month’s salary for every year of service.
“We have given them three salaries for each year” as gratuity, Munir said. “Their demands for more are unjustified.”
Ibrahim appealed to the ruler of Abu Dhabi and president of UAE Shaikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Minister for Foreign Affairs Shaikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan to look into the matter personally. “It is the holy month of Ramazan and we would like to appeal to the Shaikhs to consider our demands.”
Published in The Express Tribune, August 20th, 2010.
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