KOHAT: The local council board has approved Rs7 million for payment of salaries and pension to the employees of tehsil municipal administration (TMA), Kohat.

Sources said that scarcity of funds had resulted due to excessive appointments of people in the TMA on the recommendations of parliamentarians and senior officials. They said that a decade ago the amount of total monthly salary was Rs4.5 million, which now stood at Rs10 million. They alleged that direct employments were made on payment of bribe.

Though the number of staff has risen sharply, the area under the TMA is still the same as was a decade ago.

They said that the TMA management had prepared the list of surplus employees several times to terminate their services, but this could not be done due to interference of the officials and parliamentarians.

Recently, the tehsil municipal officer forwarded a list of 200 surplus employees to the council board for their termination, but instead more people were employed on the request of the new government. The sources said that there were several ghost employees who had been visiting the TMA only for collecting their monthly salary.

BANNED: The district disaster management unit here has stopped eight NGOs from continuing their work unless they provide details of their local employees and consult the district government while approving development projects.

Assistant commissioner, Kohat, Farrukh Atique who also heads the district disaster management unit, has asked all the 36 NGOs to provide details of their ongoing and approved development projects besides number of local employees working them. Eight of these NGOs have been given one week to furnish the required information otherwise their activities would be permanently banned in Kohat.