August 16, 2008	Saturday	Sha'aban 13, 1429

HYDERABAD, Aug 15: The RBOD employees have threatened to begin protest movement if their services were not regularised and recruitment of outsiders continued.

Leaders of the RBOD Employees Action Committee Syed Haider Ali Shah, Ali Nawaz Kumbhar, Asif Lashari and others attended a news conference at the press club here on Friday. “We had been working on this project for five years, therefore, our services should be confirmed,” they demanded. They regretted the conspiracy of bureaucracy for trying to terminate their services by recruiting outsiders.

“We are never paid salary on time, while remuneration of July have not been reimbursed till date,” they lamented and added: “Previous government increased the salaries by 15 per cent, while the present one by 20 per cent but the employees of RBOD are being paid only Rs3,000.” They called for implementing both the announcements, along with the payment of arrears.

They alleged the bureaucracy of misappropriating hundreds of thousands in the project during last six years and demanded a high level inquiry into it. The leaders were of the view that a mere 40 per cent RBOD employees were local while the rest outsiders.

The authorities in July placed an advertisement in newspapers inviting fresh applications for vacant posts, along with advising old employees to submit their cases for regularisation, they said. However, Jamshoro office refused to accept their regularisation applications, as well as telling them that their services were no longer required, they said.

Old employees then sent the same through courier service but again they were stopped from appearing in the test on Aug 4, on the plea that their applications were not received which proved the intentions of bureaucracy.

To a query, they said that the outsiders working in the RBOD though were Sindhis, but from other districts. Yet to another, they replied that the representation of locals i.e., from Jamshoro to Sehwan, their representation was a mere 86 among 500 employees. Earlier, workers demonstrated outside the press club to press for the acceptance of their demands.