QUETTA: Hundreds of contract employees of Quetta Development Authority (QDA) staged a protest rally on Monday against non-payment of salaries to them for the last five months.

The protesting employees marched on different roads and gathered in front of Quetta Press Club carrying placards and banners inscribed with their demands seeking immediate payment of their dues.

The employees chanted slogans against top QDA authorities and demanded immediate payment of their held-up salaries.

Addressing the protesters, the President of QDA Employees Union, Khan Zaman, condemned QDA authorities for not only having failed to regularise contract employees for years, but also for stopping payment of their salaries for the last five months.

He appealed to the new provincial government of Balochistan to immediately take notice of this injustice with contract employees who he said were not even able to purchase Eid clothes for members of their families.

He accused the director general of the QDA of deliberately not paying salaries to contract employs on the ground that the department had been under NAB investigation, adding that non-payment of salaries was tantamount to financial murder of poor employees.

He said that on the one hand the director general claimed that salaries could not be paid to contract employees because the QDA was under NAB investigation, but on the other he was releasing payments to contractors who had carried out different development works assigned by the organisation.

Published in Dawn, August 21st, 2018