SWABI: The office-bearers of Local Government Employees Federation, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, on Sunday said that local government institutions were in dire financial straits and didn’t have funds to even pay salary and pension.

They were speaking at a meeting held here on Sunday.

Shaukat Ali Anjum, central president of Pakistan Workers Federation, Shaukat Ali Kayani, patron-in-chief of employees’ federation, KP chapter, and Anwar Kamal Khan, the federation’s provincial president, spoke on the occasion.

They asked the provincial government to provide funds to the local government institutions to enable them to pay salary and pension to their employees.

“Due to feeble financial position thousands of employees and pensioners associated with local government institutions are facing hardship,” said Shaukat Anjum.

Mr Shaukat Kayani said employees of local government institutions had been deprived of salaries and pensions for several months.

They demanded introduction of speedy reforms to improve the financial position of local government institutions.

They asserted that only strong institutions could provide better facilities to people. They demanded that the existing financial resources of income of local government institutions, including rents, taxes, map fee, property transfer tax, licence fees, loading and unloading taxes should be increased.

Meanwhile, pensioners on Sunday complained that banks failed to pay them their pensions.

Talking to Dawn, they said that they were expecting to receive their pension on May 30 or 31 to do Eid shopping. They said that due to delay in pension payments they were facing financial difficulties.

The pensioners said it was not the first time that they did not get the pension on time.

When contacted, an official of the district accounts office, told Dawn on condition of anonymity that they had already transferred the pension funds to banks.

The relevant bank officials could not be contacted to know their version on the matter.

Published in Dawn, June 2nd, 2025