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HYDERABAD, June 13: Members of the Hyderabad District Council and the Nazims, Naib Nazims and councillors of different union councils continued their token hunger strike outside the local press club on the third consecutive day on Friday.
They are protesting against the withholding of the Annual Development Programme funds for 2002-2003 amounting to Rs226 million by the Sindh government.
Sindh minister for Zakat, Ushr, Auqaf, religious and minority affairs Dr Irfan Gul Magsi visited the protest camp and assured the elected representatives that their problem had been resolved.
He said that the Sindh chief secretary had already issued orders to expeditiously release the ADP funds. He also showed the protesters the letter of the chief secretary and assured that the funds would be released without delay.
The minister said that the funds would be spent on those development projects for which tenders had already been invited through the newspapers.
A majority of the protesters appreciated the efforts of Dr. Magsi. However, there was a clear division among the protesters whether to call off the hunger strike or continue the protest till the release of funds and the issuance of work orders.
However, it was decided to continue hunger strike till the release of funds and issuance of work orders.
Some Nazims announced that if the funds were not released by June 20, the elected representatives would tender their resignations en block.
They also decided not to attend any session of the district, taluka and union councils till the release of funds.
Meanwhile, it has been announced that the budget session of the Hyderabad District Council will be held on June 21.
SALARIES: An amount of over Rs730,000 has been sanctioned to pay 618 field employees of the water management wing of the provincial agriculture department outstanding salaries of the last two and a half years.
This was said by the Sindh agriculture secretary, Aftab Ahmed Memon, while discussing water management programme with the field officers at his office in Karachi the other day.
A spokesman for the department, in a statement issued here on Wednesday, said that the employees belonged to the Left Bank Outfall Drain, a Japan-assisted programme and on-farm water management project and were not getting salaries due to discontinuation of the projects.
He said that out of the 1,333 employees, 653 were absorbed in the engineering wing, 61 in the agriculture extension wing and 53 in the research wing whereas services of 258 employees were regularized under non-development budget.
The agriculture department was also preparing a case for regularization of services of 331 employees under regular non-development budget, Mr Memon added.
