HYDERABAD: Water and Sanitation Agency (Wasa), Hyderabad, employees on Monday threatened to disrupt water supply to the city in protest against non-payment of their salaries and dues and the relevant authorities’ indifference towards their other issues.

Organised by Hyderabad Development Authority’s Mehran Workers Union, a demonstration was held by Wasa employees outside the local press club where participants carrying banners and placards raised slogans against their managing director, senior HDA officials and the district administration.

Speaking to them, Rasheed Shaikh and Aslam Abbasi, the vice president and general secretary of the union, respectively, criticised Commissioner Asif Haider Shah, Deputy Commissioner Fayyaz Ahmed Jatoi and the provincial authorities concerned for not paying heed to their repeated calls for payment of salaries and dues to Wasa employees.

They warned that all five filter plants in Hyderabad would be shut down on Tuesday to stop water supply to the entire city if seven months salaries of around 1,100 employees and four months salaries of another 1,300 employees, as well as pension of 450 retired workers were not released.

They also demanded regularisation of contractual workers and acceptance of other demands put forward to the Wasa managing director long ago.

They said that the Wasa MD would refer them to the deputy commissioner whenever they approached him in connection with their demands.

They said that the DC never intervened on the ground that he lacked the powers to address the issues.

The union leaders claimed the Wasa MD did not have the ability to run the agency in an efficient manner and called for his immediate removal.

Referring to the April 20 meeting with the DC, they claimed that the district chief had assured them that the pending salaries and pension would be released to the aggrieved employees within 10-12 days but this did not happen.

In sheer disappointment, they said, they had taken the painful decision to shut the Hala Naka, Paretabad, Latifabad and two Jamshoro filter plants from 10am on Tuesday till a settlement of their issues. They said the sewerage pumping stations would not be shut down during the protest.

Published in Dawn, May 12th, 2015

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