Unpaid Sukkur employees see light at the end of the tunnel

The chief minister has approved Rs40m for the Sukkur administration.

SUKKUR: It has been seven long months since nearly 1,000 municipal employees of Sukkur saw their last paycheck and pension slip. However, their plight might be soon over, as Chief Minsiter Qaim Ali Shah has directed authorities to release Rs40 million to the city administration within one week.

The decision came, however, after dozens of unpaid municipal employees and pensioners had boycotted their duties on Monday, and staged a sit-in outside the residence of Pakistan Peoples Party Senator Islamuddin Shaikh.

Led by Staff Workers Union leaders Chaudhary Shafaat Ali, Gul Bahar and Shankar Lal, the protesting employees locked their offices and then marched towards the Senator’s residence, where they shouted slogans against him and his son, MNA Nauman Islam Shaikh.

Ali told The Express Tribune that over 1,000 municipal employees in Sukkur, and around 800 pensioners, had been forced to make do without pay for the past seven months.

He said that the city administration gets Rs20 million every month as its share of the Octroi Zila Tax, of which more than Rs16 million goes to the city’s water and sanitation agency, the North Sindh Urban Services Corporation. The union leader said that the remaining Rs4 million was insufficient for paying all employees.



Ires, a sanitation worker, complained that she had retired two years ago, and was facing immense hardship, as she had not been getting her pension for the last seven months. Munni, whose husband also worked in the sanitation department before he died six months ago, asked authorities to explain how she could continue living without getting any financial support from the authorities. “How can a person survive without income, when inflation is on a constant rise?”

When contacted, Sukkur administrator Tufail Soomro said that after paying the water and sanitation agency and instalments on its outstanding loans, the city administration was left with only Rs3.7 million to take care of the entire municipal administration. He added that the administration needed around Rs17.5 million every month to pay salaries and pensions.

However, he was confident that the employees would soon see their paychecks, as Qaim Ali Shah had approved Rs140 million for the Sukkur municipal administration. Around Rs40 million of that amount would be released within one week, he added. The remaining Rs100 million would be released in five monthly installments.

The employee union leader, Shafaat Ali, later said that Farrukh Adil Shaikh, media coordinator for Senator Islamuddin, had informed the protesting employees that the PPP lawmaker was also looking into the matter. Ali said that while they have ended their sit-in, they would continue to boycott their duties till their salaries are disbursed.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 12^th, 2013.