RAWALPINDI: Employees of the metro bus service on Thursday staged a protest in front of Rawalpindi Press Club for nonpayment of their salaries for three months.

Punjab Mass Transit Authority (PMTA) has outsourced issuance of tickets and other jobs to a private company, Inbox. But the company has not paid salaries to the employees.

More than 50 employees gathered outside the press club and chanted slogans against PMTA for not pressing the private company to pay their salaries.

They said during the lockdown the government was paying salaries to its employees but had failed to ensure the pays of employees working with private companies. When contacted, Rawalpindi-Islamabad Metro Bus Service Operations Manager Shamaila Mohsin told Dawn that they had cleared all payments to Inbox and it was the responsibility of the company to pay salaries to its employees.

She said for the smooth flow of the metro bus service the PMTA had outsourced the works, adding drivers, ticketing staff, security guards and sanitation staff were not the direct employees of the authority.

It is not the responsibility of the authority to interfere in the internal matters of private companies, she added.

She said the authority could do anything and it had no authority to ask private companies to pay salaries to their staff. However, she said the PMTA could impose a fine on the company if any work assigned to it was not complete.

Published in Dawn, May 8th, 2020