MANSEHRA: The workers of 860-megawatt Suki Kanari hydropower project have announced that they will go on strike and block the main road in the area from April 16 against low wages and other issues.

“The Chinese company working on our dam had agreed last month that it would give us all incentives mentioned in the government’s labour policy but now, it is not following that agreement prompting us to agitate to claim right,” president of the Suki Kanari hydropower project labour union Ibrar Shah told reporters in Balakot on Saturday.

He said after boycotting work, the project’s more than 600 labourers would stage a sit-in on the Mansehra-Naran-Jalkhad Road near Paris.

Mr Shah complained that the Chinese company fined labourers and slashed their daily wages without assigning any reason and that those who raised the issue with the management were sacked.

Warn will boycott work, block main road from tomorrow

He said in talks with the committee of landowners, the federal government had agreed to hire the services of local residents for dam project but that agreement was being violated as outsiders were hired even as labourers.

The Suki Kanari hydropower project is the only in the energy sector, which is being executed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor initiatives.

SCHOOL UNDERSTAFFED: The Government Higher Secondary School, Sallahbut, in Oghi tehsil is acutely understaffed to the misery of students.

Tehsil councillor Hafiz Mohammad Younus told reporters in Oghi on Saturday that at least 15 posts of the school’s teaching staff and principal had long been lying vacant but the education department was least pushed about filling them.

Accompanied by a group of people from Karori union council, he said the PTI-led provincial government had been making claims about education reforms but they’re contradicted by the ground realities at least in Oghi.

The councillor said the local residents had been making a struggle for the start of higher secondary classes in the school for a long time and they even took up the issue with the education department’s bosses and lawmakers, but not to avail.

“We will come onto the streets if the government doesn’t fill school vacancies and start higher secondary classes without delay,” he warned.

STRIKE THREATENED: The hoteliers in Mansehra have warned they will go on strike if the government doesn’t withdraw new tax on their gas bills.

“We will go for an indefinite shutter-down strike if the RLNG tax imposed from Dec and added in the current gas bill is not withdrawn by the federal government,” trader body president Shoaib

Khan told a meeting of hoteliers here.

Mr Shoaib said the RLNG tax had doubled bills for commercial gas consumers and thus, costing their businesses dear.

He said Mr Khan said if the government didn’t withdraw that draconian tax within week, then would go on shutter down strike.

Published in Dawn, April 15th, 2018