Non-payment of salaries: Wasa workers’ union suspends supply to Hyderabad district

Over 2,000 employees have not been paid their salaries for the last four to seven months.

HYDERABAD: The Hyderabad Development Authority’s Mehran workers’ union suspended the supply of over 70 million gallons of water to the city from filtration plants on Thursday to protest the non-payment of their salaries.

Around two million people in the City, Latifabad and Qasimabad talukas will suffer from acute water shortage if the supply is not restored within 24 hours.

The leader of Mehran Workers Union Imtiaz Kolachi told The Express Tribune that more than 2,000 regular and contract employees have not been paid their salaries since the last four to seven months.

The union, before resorting to closing the filtration plants, had protested for almost a week for acceptance of their demands. On Wednesday, the workers tried to shut down the sewage pumping stations but the police and Water and Sanitation Authority (Wasa) officials prevented the closure.

On Thursday morning, however, the union closed the supply from the main Jamshoro road filtration plant and two other plants. According to the managing director of Wasa, Saleemuddin, a sum of Rs180 million is required for the salaries.

“We have sent a summary of Rs120 million to the Sindh government so that we can pay some of the salaries,” he told. The Wasa has been suffering from financial crises since the last many years. Officials lament that while the provincial government has stopped subsidising the agency, a majority of the public and private consumers do not pay their water utility bills.

The agency’s expenses stand at around Rs50 million a month, including Rs38 million for salaries. They hardly recover a third from their monthly billing of Rs90 million which includes Rs50 million from domestic consumers and Rs25 million from the Sindh government’s various departments, besides other bulk consumers.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 19^th, 2014.