SUKKUR: Employees of the revenue department staged protests in Jacobabad and Badin under the banner of All Sindh Revenue Employees Association on Friday, demanding the government grant them 100 per cent raise and accept other demands.

The revenue employees in Jacobabad observed May 5 as ‘black day’ and took out a rally, carrying banners and placards inscribed with their demands. They marched on different roads before gathering outside the revenue department office where they held a sit-in.

The association’s leaders Kamaluddin Langah, Farhan Ali Lashari, Kamil Khan Lashari and others said in their speeches that they could not forget the May 5, 2014 incident when their colleagues held a protest and staged a sit-in in Karachi to press the government for accepting their demands but were instead baton charged and tear-gassed.

They said that it appeared the government was once again creating a similar environment. The government was meting out step-motherly treatment to them and depriving them of their due rights, they said.

They said that their salaries were too low as compared to the salary and other perks their colleagues were receiving in other provinces. They were, therefore, facing existential problems and living in abject poverty, they said.

They demanded the authorities concerned grant them 100 per cent raise in salaries, pay utility allowance, allow son quota in jobs after the death of an employee and award them time-scale upgrades etc.

Otherwise, they warned, they would launch a protest movement.

BADIN: Employees of the revenue department observed pen-down strike and took out a rally in protest against the government’s failure to accept their demands.

The protesters marched to the deputy commissioner’s office where they held a sit-in.

Addressing the protesters, the president of the association’s Badin chapter, Ali Nawaz Samoon, urged the government to accept their just demands and hoped the May 5 incident would not be repeated and the government would take steps to end unrest among the revenue employees.

Published in Dawn, May 6th, 2017