CHITRAL: Streets, roads and public places of Chitral city have been flooded with garbage and waste due to strike of the sanitation staff of tehsil municipal administration for the last four weeks incessantly owing to non-payment of salaries and allowances.

The representative of the staff, Amir Khan, told journalists that they had not been paid salaries for the last five months, forcing them to go on strike.

He said that during the last one year, it was their third strike for salaries. He said that TMA was not able to pay salaries and allowances to its employees on monthly basis.

Mr Khan said that one could easily imagine the pathetic and deplorable condition of a family without money for four months continuously.

He said that due to non-payment of salaries and fire wood allowance, they were not able to purchase firewood for their homes while the temperature in Chitral dropped below zero degree Celsius.

An official of TMA said that it was one of the weakest TMAs of the province which had a large establishment and meagre resources, failing to commensurate its expenses whose major component was the salaries to its 133 employees and hundreds of its retired staff.

He said that the resources of TMA fulfilled hardly 30 per cent of its expenses while for the rest it depended on the additional grant from the government. He added that presently a request of TMA for a grant of Rs81.608 million was pending with the government.

Published in Dawn, January 19th, 2024