ISLAMABAD, May 6: The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has condemned the mass sacking of civil employees in Balochistan and demanded immediate reversal of the decision.

The provincial government sacked over 1,100 employees of various civil departments and advertised their posts on Friday.

More than 30,000 employees of different government departments have been observing a strike for three weeks to press the government to end the induction of army men into civilian departments and to include 40 per cent allowance in their salaries.

Those sacked were low-paid employees, including office assistants, stenographers, junior clerks, Naib Qasids, security guards and gardeners.

In a statement, issued here on Monday, former federal minister and PPP leader Syed Khurshid Shah said if and when the his party came into power, it would reinstate all those employees, who had been sacked without any reason and would take to task all those, who had been involved in malpractice.

He said the decision of the provicial government was not only anti-labour but was also inhuman. He added that the recruitment of retired army men against those posts had lent a new dimension to the incident, which would pit the army against the people of the province.

The PPP leader feared that depriving over 1,100 families of their source of livelihood and giving the jobs to military regime’s “preferred boys” would create heart burning and destabilize the already fragile social order in the province.

“The mere perception that the sacking is motivated by the desire of the regime to please its constituency of serving and retired army personnel in itself is fraught with serious consequences.”

Mr Shah said the regime had already flooded civil departments of the federal and the provincial governments and various autonomous bodies with what he called “favoured military men” in top positions, creating widespread resentment.

“From the office of (the) chief executive to the president of Azad Kashmir, from heads of almost all autonomous bodies, like Wapda, National Highway Authority, OGDC, KESC, Public Service Commission, Auqaf and Mineral Development Corporation to vice-chancellors of several universities, and from plum abbassdorial assignments to heads of sports bodies were all drawn from serving and retired military officers.”

The PPP leader said it was Benazir Bhutto’s government that had given jobs to the poor. It was an irony that while cases had been instituted against Ms Bhutto for giving jobs to the people, the military rulers were throwing people out of jobs and bringing in their own people on extraordinary perks and privileges with impunity.