HYDERABAD, July 22: A large number of municipal employees of the three Talukas of Hyderabad city, Qasimabad, and Latifabad staged a sit-in outside the local press club and blocked the road for one-and-a-half hour on Monday in protest against the non-payment of their salaries for the month of June.

The leaders of the union (CBA) of the three Talukas led the protest.

Speaking on the occasion, the Nazim union council No3, Hyderabad city, Q. Mohammed Hakim said that the municipal employees earned their living through the sweat of their brows and their only source of livelihood was their monthly wages.

He said no authority of the state had the right to withhold the salaries of the poor workers even for a single day.

He said it was the paramount duty of the Taluka Nazims, Naib Nazims, and the TMOs to ensure that the municipal employees were paid their wages on time.

The secretary general of the CBA Union, Hyderabad city Taluka, Mohammed Akram Rajput demanded that the author of the new local bodies system — the chairman of the NRB should tender his resignation.

He said the chairman NRB knew very well that the deadline was to expire on June 30, therefore, he should have made arrangements at the very outset to pay the salaries of the local councils employees.

He was equally critical of the secretary, local government, Sindh. He said that the secretary had awakened up on July 18 to bring a new formula.

He reminded President Pervez Musharraf that Gen Ziaul Haq had strengthened the local bodies system and right from 1979 to 1985 no shortage of funds had ever surfaced and the municipal employees had been given their full rights. “What type of a local bodies system is this that the poor employees are not even getting their hard-earned wages on time.”

He pointed out that the salary of the three Taluka councils of Hyderabad came to about Rs19.1 million, and the city council had to pay tens of millions of rupees which it received in legacy from the defunct Hyderabad Municipal Corporation.

He said that if the salaries of the employees were not released within three days, then the employees of the three Talukas would stop work, and Hyderabad, Latifabad, and Qasimabad would be converted into a garbage dump.