LAHORE, Dec 11: Clerks set up a protest camp in front of the Assembly Chambers on Eid day (Tuesday) to express resentment against inordinate delay in the acceptance of their demands by Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif.

The clerks set up the protest camp after offering Eid prayers and resisted police attempts to make them leave the area.

During the scuffle with police, Public Health Engineering Department clerk Munir Khan suffered a heart stroke and was taken to hospital.

The camp was wound up in the evening after District Coordination Officer Sajjad Ahmad Bhutta assured them to arrange their meeting with the chief minister.

All-Pakistan Clerks Association’s Punjab President Muhammad Afzal said the Punjab government was not implementing the federal government decision to give them house acquisition facility and upgrade their posts like other provincial governments. But it had started dismissing contract employees instead of regularising them.

He said the rulers planned to sack 100,000 contract employees engaged by the previous regime on the ground that they had been recruited in violation of rules.

He said the provincial government was also trying to dislocate thousands of employees by shifting headquarters of communication and works and public health engineering departments from Lahore to Multan and Rawalpindi. The APCA would resist the attempt, he said.