QUETTA: Hundreds of retired employees of Zarai Taraqiati Bank Limited (ZTBL) have urged Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to order the bank authorities to increase their pension in line with the federal government announcements.

They have claimed that the bank has not increased the pensions for the past six years.

Qazi Muhammad Younas and Perven Mali, the spokespersons for ZTBL pensioners who hail from Balochistan, on Sunday said the federal government has been increasing the pension and all other departments were paying them to their retired employees.

However, they claimed that the president and board of directors of ZTBL have been reluctant to increase the pensions.

“All pensioners have been drawing the same amount without an increase of a single penny since 2016,” Mr Younas told Dawn.

He said when the budget for 2022-23 was being tabled in the National Assembly, hundreds of retired ZTBL employees had reached Islamabad, threatening that they will go on a hunger strike unto death in front of the bank’s head office.

Upon their protests, the bank’s president had met the representatives of the pensioners and formed a committee to look into the matter, assuring that it will be resolved within three months.

He said that around 10 pensioners had filed a petition in the Sindh High Court, which ordered a 10 percent increase in the pension for the petitioners, but ignored around 3000 other pensioners.

Published in Dawn, September 5th, 2022