GILGIT, May 26: At least 20 employees of the Northern Areas Traders Corporation Limited have set up hunger strike camps outside the NATCL office. "We have not been paid wages for the last four years.
The stoppage of the salaries has rendered us impoverished and we have sold our goats, cows and other household articles to make both ends meet. We have withdrawn our children from schools as we are not able to feed ourselves what to speak of sending them to schools," representatives of the affected employees Manzoor Hussain, Liaquat Ali Khan and Abdul Majeed told reporters at the hunger strike camp.
They accused NATCL manager Malik Sadiq for swindling more than Rs15 million of the NATCL in the name of ghost projects, which were paid from the NATCL reserves.
They alleged that Mr Sadiq and an employee of the Karakoram Bank rendered the corporation insolvent and the employees of the NATCL were denied salaries in the name of deficit.
"We will take to streets along with our families and if our problems are not solved we will resort to self-immolation along with our children," they said. The representatives of the striking workers said that they not able to pay utility bills and shopkeepers were insulting them in public and pestering for their debts.
"This public insult has made me think to commit suicide as I have nothing to pay for the debts," Abdul Majeed said. He said they approached the Northern Areas chief secretary who happened to be the chairman of the NATCL, but to no avail.
TOURISM BODY: The Northern Areas administration has decided to set up a tourism department and would be headed by a secretary in view of the vital importance of the tourism sector in the region.
Sources said that the Northern Areas chief secretary, Farid Khan, during a high-level meeting, had said that the newly created department would cater for the requirements of the foreign and local tourists visiting the region.
"The need for establishing a tourism department in Northern Areas was always felt, but result-oriented steps were not taken in the past," Mr Khan said, adding that the government had realized the importance of tourism and decided to set up a separate department for it.
The department would have its own website to provide all information to the tourists, he said. Mr Khan said a workshop on tourism would soon be organized under the aegis of the Northern Areas Tourism Development Board (NATDB) for the benefit of those associated with the sector.
It was decided at the meeting that all the hotels in Northern Areas would be registered category-wise after declaring tourism sector as industry in line with the decision of the federal government.
The meeting decided to set up tourism information centres at Gilgit, Skardu and Sust and at all the entry points for provide immediate information, brochures and guide maps to tourists.
The meeting was informed that a draft tourism policy had been prepared and circulated amongst the members. The chief secretary asked the board members to submit their comments and recommendations by the first week of next month to finalize a comprehensive tourism policy for the region.
