KARACHI: Over 15,500 workers of the civic agencies could not celebrate the religious festival of Eidul Azha properly as they were not given their advance salary, it is learnt here reliably. This was caused due to the delayed release by the government/Karachi Metropolitan Corporation etc and slow processing by the banks concerned.

The workers who could not get their salaries included over 13,000 of the KMC and around 2,500 workers of district municipal corporation’s Jamshed Zone.

Responding to Dawn queries, KMC Sajjan union chief Zulfiqar Shah condemned the lethargic attitude of the officials of the government/KMC and Sindh Bank owing to which the poor workers could not get their salaries in time, and they along with their families could not celebrate the religious festival properly.

He said that the government/KMC and the bank know about the procedures and the time taken so the officials, keeping in view the lacklustre attitude of their fellow officials, could have released the funds earlier. However, it was not done.

Mr Shah said that the KMC etc have an agreement with the CBA union that the employees — Muslims for Eidul Fitr; Hindus for Diwali and Holi; and Christians for Christmas and Easter — would get their salaries in advance so that they could celebrate their religious festivals properly. But this is rarely done.

He said that it was not the first time that the workers have not been paid in time to celebrate their religious festival as earlier employees were not paid their salaries in time for Easter and for Holi or Diwali.

He said that it was unfortunate that this happened in Sindh as in Punjab such a situation had never occurred and the workers were always paid their salaries well in advance so that they could celebrate their religious festivals properly.

Responding to Dawn, KMC spokesperson Ali Hassan Sajid conceded that the workers had not been paid their salaries before Eidul Azha. To another question as to who was responsible for the non-payment, he said that it was owing to delayed payment by the Sindh government, which released the funds on Aug 16. After that the funds were between the banks — State Bank to Sindh Bank to Habib Bank.

He said that the KMC had not yet received the funds in its account till now. But he hoped that the funds would be transferred by the Habib Bank into the KMC account on Monday after which the workers could get paid — most probably by Monday afternoon/Tuesday, he added.

Published in Dawn, August 25th, 2018