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| July 25, 2007 | Wednesday | Rajab 09, 1428 |
KARACHI: Low-ranking archaeology staff in a fix over transfer
KARACHI, July 24: Mohammad Hanif, a lower-division clerk and victim of paralysis, is among 44 employees of the department of archaeology who have been asked to shift to Islamabad and join their duties immediately or else face disciplinary action, Dawn has reliably learnt.
The archaeology department has quietly shifted its headquarters from Karachi to Islamabad during the last two years and half of its staff -- mostly officers -- has already been transferred there. The majority of its staff in Karachi consists of lower-grade employees.
Mr Hanif has recently suffered a paralysis attack and has not been spared from the transfer order like a number of elderly workers who are at the twilight of their career.
Officials in the department confirmed that their headquarters, which had been working in Karachi since the department was created after the inception of Pakistan, had been shifted to Islamabad.
They said half of its 90 employees, who did not offer much resistance, were transferred. However, the remaining 44 employees, most of whom were placed in the exploration branch, were allowed to perform their duties in Karachi after they protested against the move.
This situation did not prevail for long as they received a letter from the director-general of the department on July 17 asking them to immediately report to their duties in the federal capital. The majority of these employees are grade-1 (naib qasids) to grade-7 lower and upper division clerks.
They include a sanitary worker, a chowkidar and six naib-qasids (all BPS-01), a frash and a packer (BPS-02). The fact is that employees up to BPS-03 are employed in Pakistan on a local basis and cannot be transferred from the city of their residence.
All these employees are bewildered as to how they could survive in Islamabad with the high cost of living in that city, considering the meagre amounts they are paid.The employees say they collectively support more than 400 dependents and it would be almost impossible to get accommodations in Islamabad and provide a decent education to their children from their paltry earnings.
The employees have signed an appeal in writing addressed to the president and prime minister requesting a stay on the orders of the director-general.
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