KARACHI: Over 7,000 Christian employees of various civic agencies have not been paid their salaries by the last day of the current month to the disappointment of many of them as the community is celebrating the religious festival of Easter on Sunday.

The government has announced a holiday for its employees belonging to the Christian community but fell short of allowing disbursement of their salaries a couple of days ahead of the festival, leaders of their labour unions said.

There are over 7,000 workers — more than 4,500 regular and around 2,500 contractual — employed in the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC), municipal corporations of the Central, West and Korangi districts. According to sources, most of the Christian employees are low-paid workers drawing monthly salaries of BPS-1 and BPS-2 ie between Rs15,000 and Rs22,000.

Responding to Dawn’s queries, KMC spokesperson Ali Hassan Sajid regretted that the civic agency had not been able to disburse their salaries before Easter.

He, however, said that the KMC had approached the Sindh government for release of the funds but without a positive response.

He said that the KMC had disbursed pension funds amounting to around Rs95 million for the retired Christian employees so that at least some families could celebrate Easter in a proper manner.

KMC’s Sajjan Union (CBA) chief Zulfiqar Shah and other office-bearers including Master Samuel, Bashir Masih and Pervaiz Inayat criticised the civic agencies as well as the Sindh government over their inappropriate attitude on the occasion and described it as “discriminatory”.

Published in Dawn, April 1st, 2018