Worker Welfare Board: Dar orders release of funds for salaries

Takes notice of media reports that employees of the WWB have not been paid for the last two months.

ISLAMABAD: Finance Minister Ishaq Dar on Sunday directed Ministry of Finance to release Worker Welfare Funds (WWF) to provinces so that they might pay salaries to the relevant employees.

The minister took notice of the media reports that revealed that employees of Worker Welfare Board (WWB) in the provinces had not been paid for the last two months due to lack of funds.



Dar directed the federal finance secretary to immediately release the funds and ensure that they are transferred to the provinces by Monday (today), said a handout issued by the Ministry of Finance.

According to sources, a sum of Rs122 billion of the WWF is outstanding with the federal government and the WWB has been demanding these funds for a long time. However, the finance division is reluctant to hand over this money to the WWB.

Talking to The Express Tribune, Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) senator Saeed Ghani – who has been raising the issue in Senate – said releasing funds for salaries was not the solution of the issue as the WWB was facing difficulty due to non-availability of required resources to carry out different projects.

Following the 18th Amendment, Punjab and Sindh wanted the WWB to be devolved to provinces, but the smaller provinces were not in favour of the idea as the major chunk of the WWF is collected from Sindh, followed by Punjab.

According to some media reports, the schools run by the WWB in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) continue to suffer due to massive irregularities that emerged in the system during the past several years. These irregularities had triggered high-level inquiries and the WWF Islamabad had stopped funding to the institutions.

The employees have not been getting their salaries, which has made it difficult for them to make ends meet. The board has been running a total of 62 schools both for boys and girls in different parts of the province, where around 4,000 people are employed.

The number of these schools was not more than a dozen before 2007. But during the Awami National Party-Pakistan People’s Party coalition government, their number increased to 60. Evening shift was also introduced in 28 of those schools.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 20^th, 2014.