HYDERABAD: Workers of Hyderabad Development Authority (HDA) and Water and Sanitation Agency (Wasa) suspended supply of water from the city’s largest water filtration plant for four hours on Thursday.

The Mehran Workers Union of HDA said that they resorted to the extreme step in protest as the provincial government had failed to pay them salaries and pensions for last eight months.

The union’s leader Aslam Abbasi said that since the start of the lockdown, the union kept repeatedly urging the government to release their salaries and pensions.

When everyone in the city was stocking up food, families of HDA and Wasa workers did not even have enough to afford two meals a day, he lamented, adding that the government and HDA authorities had become indifferent to the plight of starving workers.

He said that despite such serious financial hardships, workers had continued to discharge their duties of supplying water to the city and maintaining drainage system but now they had had enough. They would continue to protest if the authorities did not immediately release their salaries and pensions.

Published in Dawn, April 3rd, 2020