Rightful demands: NADRA employees call off strike after assurances from new chief

All employees to receive bonus equivalent to their basic salary next month.

KARACHI: There is finally good news for the employees of the National Database Registration Authority (NADRA), who will be getting a bonus equivalent to their basic salaries in April.

This has been achieved through the efforts of members of the All Pakistan NADRA Employees Union (APNEU), who had threatened to go on strike last month. The members had organised a three-day token hunger strike outside Karachi Press Club in the first week of February. That was the first part of the campaign. In the next step, they had threatened to march towards NADRA headquarters in Islamabad. The final step would have seen the complete shutdown of all NADRA offices in the country.

According to the union’s general secretary, Salman Zuberi, all NADRA employees, in basic pay scales one to five will receive a bonus equivalent to their salaries. “We have been promised to receive two bonuses every year,” he said. “This was all decided in a meeting with the newly-appointed chief, Usman Mobin, in Islamabad.” Zuberi added that he had high hopes with the new chief as he had served the authority as the chief technology officer earlier and was well aware of the issues they were facing.

With regards to medical insurance and allowances, which had always been coveted by the NADRA employees, Zuberi said that the new chief had approved the medical plan for all employees.

Mobin assured the delegation that a notification will be issued within the next 15 days for the medical provision of all NADRA employees and which would include the top medical facilities on the panel.

Zuberi said that incentives for NADRA projects, such as the arms licence project, the Sim verification project and the Benazir Income Support Programme, were not equally disbursed among the employees. “Some of the employees received Rs50,000 from these project, while others did not get anything,” he lamented. “The new chief has assured us that extra allowances from such projects will be equally distributed among all the employees from now on.”

Another issue discussed at the meeting was of the lack of merit or protocol for promotions. “Since we have no service structure or rules in NADRA for the promotion of employees, there isn’t any merit,” he said. “The new chief has assured us that he will form a committee to come up with recommendations with regards to grading and a service structure for NADRA employees.”

Published in The Express Tribune, March 7^th, 2015.