LAHORE: Employees of the Punjab Child Protection and Welfare Bureau (CPWB) held a celebration on Saturday to mark the 100 per cent increase in their basic pay – after 15 years of waiting.

The special allowance was finally approved and released by the Punjab government in January that had been due for the last 15 years. The allowance will be given to all the 550 employees of the bureau.

CPWB Chairperson Sarah Ahmed was the chief guest at the event. Employees said it had been a relief to have the amount finally released.

“Because of our department’s performance as a whole, we were given this special approval,” says an employee of the bureau. “The Punjab government was requested by the chairperson to reward the employees by releasing this allowance.”

According to a notification issued earlier by the government on Jan 28, the additional chief secretary (home) had ordered the release of the payment with effect from Jan 18 in light of the decision made by the Standing Committee of Cabinet on Finance and Development.

Sarah Ahmed, the chairperson, congratulated the employees as they vowed to continue their hard work and care for the destitute and abandoned children. She said that she hoped that they would be able to continue to perform in the same way.

“CPWB must be made an exemplary department which is possible only with full-fledged support of everyone,” she said. She thanked Director General Mir Shuja Qutab Bhatti, and all employees for arranging the reception.

She told Dawn that the allowance had not been granted by the previous government to the Bureau, even though the former chairperson had also tried her level best to have the amount released but the government did not approve it.

Grade 17 officer Amin told Dawn that the department had performed very well under the Covid lockdown and that they had rescued several children on a daily basis. “We have rescued 63,000 children in Punjab throughout Covid.

Most of these were street children because they were into begging, while others were found missing or neglected.”

He says that they managed to reunite many of these abandoned children with their families. Some of them had not seen them for 13 or 14 years. Apart from that there were abandoned babies who are given to foster parents through our court.

Amin says his basic pay is defineitly not enough so this extra money would be extremely important to him and his family.

Published in Dawn, February 7th, 2021