LAHORE: The Technical Education and Vocational Training Authority (Tevta) employees on the fourth day of their protest on Friday shifted their sit-in from outside the press club to the Charing Cross, demanding release of disparity reduction allowance notification.

Tevta employees from all over the province, including women, have been protesting for the last four days demanding 25pc disparity allowance.

One of the sit-in participants, Eng Khurrum Abbas, alleges the authority’s administration is victimisng the protesting employees and threatening them with “dire consequences” to make them end the protest. He says the administration transferred 150 to 200 employees to different areas of the province for lodging the protest, regretting that no concrete measures have been taken to give the workers their due right of disparity allowance.

He says the employees could not meet their daily expenses with their salary because the inflation has reached 400pc during the last one and a half years.

Tevta Chief Operating Officer Ahmad Khawar Shahzad told Dawn the authority’s board of directors has approved 40pc disparity allowance for the employees and a summary in this regard was sent to the chief minister, who forwarded it after approval to the cabinet’s standing committee on Finance and Development. The committee, he adds, will hold its meeting in a week or two and approve the summary after which the employees will start receiving the allowance.

He says they had conveyed the details to the protesting employees, but they are demanding immediate notification of the approval of the summary that was not possible without the standing committee’s meeting. He says the employees will have to end the sit-in and join their duty, pledging that no disciplinary action will be taken against them.

Published in Dawn, November 5th, 2022