Merger with RWMC: CDGR sanitary workers protest move

Official says merger would not affect service structure, other benefits.

RAWALPINDI:

Scores of Rawalpindi City District Government (CDG) sanitary department workers staged a protest demonstration on Saturday against their department’s proposed merger with the Rawalpindi Waste Management Company (RWMC).

While carrying banners and placards, protesters including women and their children marched from the RWMC Rawal Town office to the press club while chanting slogans and demanding that the plan to absorb them into the RWMC before its privatization be scrapped. They said that for them, privatising RWMC would be tantamount to economic murder. Speakers including Farooq Khan, Muhammad Shafiq, Younus Khan and others said that the CDG and the RWMC administrations were planning to transfer sanitation to a private firm, for which the administration would pay up to Rs1 billion per month. They said that the administration was paying far less to them in terms of their salaries. The protesters said that they would go to any extent to stop the proposed privatisation.



Meanwhile, Solid Waste Management District Officer (DO) Dr Mazhar Azeem said that in the first phase, all employees of CDGR dealing with sanitation would be shifted to the RWMC with the same facilities and benefits they get in the city government.

“There would be no change in their salary, service and pension structure,” he told The Express Tribune. He said that after the employees were absorbed, the government would seek tenders from private firms to bid in the privatisation process. Dr Azeem said that sanitation departments in seven major cities including Faisalabad, Multan and Lahore and Rawalpindi will or already have been privatised. “In Lahore, a private company has already started functioning,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 12^th, 2014.