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| April 16, 2006 | Sunday | Rabi-ul-Awwal 17, 1427 |
Payment of salaries stopped
MIRAMSHAH, April 15: Political administration in the North Waziristan Agency has stopped payment of salaries to about 1,000 class IV employees under collective responsibility clause of the Frontier Crimes Regulation.
Sources said the administration had suspended all incentives, including salaries and allowances, of class IV employees for eight months in the agency.
They said the low-grade employees belonged to tribes considered hostile under section 21 of the FCR, introduced by the colonial government.
They said the authorities had invoked section 21 of the law due to increasing attacks on security forces and government installations in the volatile region.
Officials said the agency’s political administration had issued directives to respective tribes to take measures on their own to stop militants’ attacks on troops and protect government property in the area.
The authorities had also stopped issuing passports and national identity cards to people belonging to the ‘hostile tribes’, an official said.
“Under the law, they (tribesmen) are responsible to fulfil their collective and territorial responsibilities,” he said.
About 200 class IV employees of the health department working in hospitals and basic health units in the agency have gone on strike against non-payment of salaries and other incentives to them.
One protesting employee said the political administration was misusing the law because, according to him, the said section was not applicable to government servants.
The employees started strike on Thursday. They wore black armbands.
The sources said other employees in the agency would also go on strike soon.
DISPLACEMENT: Residents of the Anghar village have started leaving their homes after Wednesday night’s Cobra helicopter attack on residential compounds.
Officials claimed that nine militants, including a senior Al Qaeda commander, had been killed in the operation.
Sources said tension was running high in the area and more than 50 families left the village on Friday for safe places in the agency.
They said local authorities had yet to find out the site where the killed militants had been buried.
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