APCA protest: ‘Workers will march to the capital if salaries not raised’

FAISALABAD:

Scores of employees of the Irrigation Department led by All Pakistan Clerks Association (APCA) on Thursday staged a protest demonstration, urging the government to give them salary raises.

The protesters, carrying banners and placards, marched from the offices of the Irrigation Department to Faisalabad Press Club where they also staged a sit-in.

The protesters also blocked Press Club Road for traffic.

Addressing the workers, APCA divisional president Syed Akhtar Ali Shaheen said APCA members employees formed the backbone of the civil service. He said they were underpaid and overworked. He said the government should raise salaries of employees keeping in view the inflation rate.

“They should also be provided incentives and allowances,” he said.

He said if the government did not revise pay scales of government employees, enhance their salaries and regularise services of daily wage workers and contractual, work-charge and ad-hoc employees, the APCA would launch a country-wide protest.

He said the APCA would lock out its offices on May 27.

He said the workers would march to the capital on June 3 if their demands was not accepted.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 22^nd, 2015.