PESHAWAR Aug 11: The All Pakistan Class-IV Employees Association has threatened to go on a countrywide strike if the government did not abolish the fixed salary system.

Speaking at a press conference here, the association’s provincial president Afsar Khan and central secretary Abdul Sattar Hoti said: “We have chosen the path of legal struggle for our rights”.

Afsar Khan said that “we did not indulge in law-breaking activities” but the government “is not paying any heed to the problems of class-IV employees”.

He said the authority of giving facilities to employees lay with the NWFP government, but like previous governments the MMA government “has also failed to provide any relief to class-IV employees”.

He maintained that the MMA government had absolved itself of all responsibilities by saying that the IMF and World Bank had barred any raise in salaries.

He said that if the class-IV employees were a burden on the national exchequer then bureaucracy should be declared a bigger burden.

He said that after every budget, low-paid workers indulged in strikes to press for their demands but no-one chalked out any solid plan for the uplift of low-paid workers.

He said that if the government did not regularise class-IV employees they would launch a countrywide protest campaign.

He said that a raise ranging from Rs1000 to Rs2000 had been given to regular employees while contract-based employees had been ignored.

He maintained that the government raised petroleum and edible items’ prices every now and then but did not increase salaries proportionally.

He claimed that MPA Fareed Khan had arranged “our meeting with the chief minister and senior minister on July 14 in which the two had promised to solve our problems”.

He said the government was busy tabling the Hasba bill in the assembly instead of solving people’s problems.

“We are planning to observe a strike. In the first phase, however, hunger strike camps would be set up in all the districts of the province,” he said.

In the second phase of protest, employees would stay away from work and corner meetings will be held. A strike will be observed on September 28 at the provincial level, he added.