RATODERO: The employees of Municipal Committee Ratodero and Naundero held rallies in their respective towns on Wednesday on the call of the All Sindh Shah Lateef Local Government Employees Federation.
Marching through different roads, the participants of the rally reached the local press clubs where they held protest demonstrations and staged sit-ins for the acceptance of their demands. The rally in Ratodero was led by Abdul Hadi Markhiyani, Wazir Ali Babar, Abdul Qadir Abro, Manzoor Ali Babar, Sono Khan, Muhammad Essa and Irfan Shah.
In Naundero, the protesters were led by Hafiz Mushtaque Korejo. The rally was also attended by Nisar Bhutto, Bashir Shaikh, Ahad Jamal, Zahid Ali, and Muharram Ali. The participants held placards and banners in their hands and chanted slogans against the non-payment of salaries through a proper channel.
While addressing the participants, Korejo and Markhiyani said that 50% corruption would be eliminated if the local government employees were paid through district accounts offices. They added that the rulers were afraid of implementing a proper system because of fear of losing a source of income.
“Other provincial government employees are paid via online transaction but this is not the case here. Why is this discrimination there? The rulers conduct inquiries against the ‘corrupt’ but the truth is that only the poor and hardworking employees are subject to these inquiries,” they said.
Talking about the inquiries against the employees appointed in 2012, they termed the inquiries as harassment and said that it was because of those appointments that many poverty-stricken families were rescued from the grip of poverty.
They further said that employees of union councils, whose monthly pay was less than the accepted daily wage and termed this as discrimination.
They demanded the regularisation of their jobs with immediate effect and asked for the inquiries against the poor employees to be brought to an end. They further demanded disbursement of salaries through relevant district offices and warned that if their demands were not met, they would stage a long march from Bhit Shah to Karachi.
