LAHORE, Jan 2: Thousands of the union, town and district councillors on Wednesday swarmed the Jinnah Hall to evolve a strategy for the acceptance of their demand for grant of honorarium far less than the salary of a sweeper.

The councillors, including a sizable number of women, jampacked the Jinnah Hall having the seating capacity for 300 people and occupied even the stage to attend a meeting convened by district Naib Nazim Farooq Amjad Mir to discuss ways and means for getting the honorarium sanctioned by the government for them.

Some of them were very angry over the denial of the honorarium to them while its sanction for the Nazims and the Naib Nazims and were eager to come on the government payrolls as soon as possible.

Some of them raised slogans against the Nazim, who remained absent from the meeting, when the Naib Nazim did not take a hard line on the issue and postponed the meeting after making a brief speech disallowing all others to address the gathering.

Addressing the angry councillors, Mr Mir described the grant of honorarium to the Nazims and Naib Nazims of the district, town and union councils as an intentional or unintentional conspiracy of the bureaucracy to undermine the new local government system by sowing seeds of discord among its components. He said the Nazims, Naib Nazims and councillors were the members of a team. They could not work together if the councillors were suffering from a sense of depravation due to the denial of honorarium to them.

He announced holding of the meetings of union council Nazims, Naib Nazims and councillors from Thursday (today) for election of two representatives, including a woman, from every UC. The union council representatives from the six towns will meet on Saturday to nominate 10 members from every town council for the district honorarium action committee. He announced that not only he and the district Nazim but a large number of town and union council Nazims and Naib Nazims had decided to forego the honorarium in case it was denied to the councillors.

The onlookers were amused over the impatience of the councillors, who got themselves elected after spending a lot of money and pledged to serve their voters selflessly during the local bodies elections, for getting an honorarium of Rs1,500 per month whereas the sweepers were drawing far more than Rs3,000 per month. The honoraria of the union council Nazim (Rs3,000) and Naib Nazim (Rs2,000) is also less than the salary of a sweeper.