Salary raise please: Clerks ready for protest in Lahore on Sept 9

A series of rallies will be launched starting from Multan today

BAHAWALPUR:

Members of the All Pakistan Clerks Association will march on to the Civil Secretariat on September 9 and demand that the government fulfil the promises it made to the APCA a few months ago, APCA general secretary Khalid Javed Sanghera said at the Bahawalpur Press Club on Sunday.

He said members of the APCA will hold a sit-in in front of the secretariat till the government fulfilled its promise of raising their salaries.

He said clerks in the province had been protesting for a raise since 2013. “All provinces other than the Punjab have raised salaries of clerks by 15 per cent (salaries have been raised by 10 per cent in the Punjab).”

He said the APCA had planned to stage a protest demonstration last year but it would have coincided with the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf and the Pakistan Awami Tehreek’s demonstrations. “We didn’t want the government to think we were with the dharna.”

The APCA then held a sit-in in front of the provincial assembly on November 25 and later at the [chief minister’s secretariat at] 7 Club Road, Lahore, on March 26. There, Rana Sanaullah had issued an MoU saying a summary of their demands would be prepared and sent to the chief minister for approval in 15 days, Sanghera said.

“It’s been two months and the chief minister is still sitting on the summary,” he said.



The APCA leader said it was unfortunate that the chief minister had no time for the clerks even though the government had promised to fulfil their demands in 15 days.

“So we are, once again, going to launch our movement…It will start in Multan on August 31 (today) in front of the DCO’s office, then there will be rallies in Gujranwala and Nankana Sahib. A protest demonstration in Sialkot is planned on September 7. There would be a showdown on September 9 in front of the civil secretariat in Lahore.”

Sanghera said they will not call off the protest demonstrations till the government gave in to their demands and issued a notification.

“If the government continues to ignore us, the APCA will do its best to campaign and support candidates of other parties or independent candidates in the local government elections. We will make sure that the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz goes down in the local government elections,” he said.

Both Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan governments have approved time-scale upgrade of clerks, he said. “The Punjab government, on the other hand, has a callous attitude towards us…We will find out on September 9.”

Published in The Express Tribune, August 31st, 2015.