September 16, 2008	Tuesday	Ramazan 15, 1429

LARKANA, Sept 15: A group of sacked workers of roads and highways department from Thull held a demonstration outside the press club on Monday, accusing a labour leader of siphoning off their difference-bills amount.

Gul Hassan Banglani and Habibullah Kunrani told journalists that 352 workers were fired during Nawaz Sharif’s tenure from the highway department of Jacobabad district.

They had approached the court for getting difference-bill amount where Manzoor Aheer, general secretary of the highway labour union was the attorney.

The court passed verdict in their favour with orders to Sindh government to pay the remaining bills. The government sent the amount to district government which as they claimed stood at Rs44,000,000.

They alleged that the concerned engineer Abdul Khalique Panihar in collusion with labour leader had transferred the amount to Manzoor’s personal account and the labour leader was denying them payment, they said.

Manzoor disputed the claim and said the amount was in his account, which would only be disbursed after verification. Aheer said that Rs10 million was deposited to his account for payments to what he could identify the ‘genuine’ workers from the fake ones.

He said so far 80 percent workers out of 322 had obtained their amount and few from Jacobabad and Thull were yet to get it. In 1999, 322 permanent and temporary employees were retrenched and subsequently they filed case in the labour court for their dues where he was the attorney, he said.

He said that 131 were permanent and 191 were temporary employees.

The labour court passed orders to pay salaries to workers. The highway department deposited the amount in the district government’s account from where the district coordination officer transferred it to in his (Manzoor Aheer’s) account. The amount had so far been distributed only among 80 per cent of the workers.