KOHAT: Hundreds of health workers staged a demonstration at Liaquat Memorial Hospital here on Thursday and threatened to boycott the anti-polio campaign starting from Saturday in protest against non-payment of their salaries by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government since January.

The local head of expanded programme of immunisation (EPI), Mohammad Riaz, said on the occasion that they had not been paid salaries since January 2014. He regretted that despite that they were being warned of termination of services if they boycotted duty.

Mr Raiz and his other colleagues said that for each polio campaign the WHO had fixed Rs2,150 and the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government Rs1,000 allowance for each of the workers. He said that the WHO had been paying them regularly, but the government had not released their salary since January.

They said that there were 112 areas’ heads and 1,280 vaccinators taking part in the anti-polio drive and they would boycott the coming campaign if their dues were not cleared immediately.

SHOPS SEALED: The excise and taxation department, Kohat, on Thursday sealed 23 shops over non-payment of property tax.

The head of Kohat office of excise and taxation, Tariq Masood, along with other staff raided shops in the chicken market, bazaar area and on Bannu road to check property tax receipts of shopkeepers.

During checking, the excise staff sealed 23 shops over non-payment of property tax. Mr Masood said that they had so far sealed hundreds of shops for recovery of property tax.

He claimed that the operation was yielding results and the businessmen had starting depositing tax, some of them for the first time.

The campaign was started on the directives of Federal Bureau of Revenue.

An owner of a computer wholesale shop told Dawn that the excise and taxation department had given him the option that they could pay a fixed amount of annual tax.

He said that currently the amount of fixed tax for him stood at Rs7,000.

Published in Dawn, June 13th, 2014