The Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) Paigaam Union (PU) on Thursday took out a rally from WAPDA House to Punjab Assembly Hall against the privatisation of WAPDA and rising inflation. A large number of WAPDA officials participated in the protest and chanted slogans for their demands.
Addressing the sit-in staged in front of the Punjab Assembly Hall, WAPDA PU Chairman Muhammad Yousaf Malik said, “Owing to inflation we are facing many difficulties in our lives. Our children are deprived of education and medical facilities.” He said WAPDA workers had no control on power outages and it was the government’s negligence that had resulted in power crisis.
The chairman said WAPDA employees had been working on a fixed scale for the past 30 years and no move over or up-gradation happened in their department. He demanded all WAPDA workers be given time scale after every five years and danger allowance be given to Grid System Operation, Grid System Construction, National Transmission and Dispatch Company and Line Staff. He also said that in the upcoming budget, salaries of WAPDA workers must be increased 100 percent.
PU President Zahoor Ahmed said that minimum salary of a worker should be Rs 15,000. he said, “We will not accept WAPDA’s privatisation at any cost. It is an issue of survival of WAPDA workers.”
Muhammad Akhlaaq, Mirza Rauf Jiraal, Usman Dogar, Zafar Iqbal, Moulvi Akram, Hamaad Raza, Tanveer Ahmed, Malik Zafar Alam, Azam Sulehri, Muhammad Nawaz and Ataullah Durrani were also present at the protest rally.