HYDERABAD: The Hyderabad Water & Sewerage Corporation (HW&SC) — a sister organisation of the Hyderabad Development Authority (HDA) — has been facing a myriad of issues for long.

Even after its declaration as corporation on May 14, 2024, the organisation has not yet been able to make its presence felt and not only its low-ranked employees, but also officers are crying for payment of salaries.

The HW&SC is the new nomenclature of erstwhile the Water and Sewerage Authority (Wasa), whose employees had been regularly staging hunger strikes and protests for payment of their salaries.

According to HDA Mazdoor Union (CBA) general secretary Insaf Lashari, salaries and pension of the past 14 months were not paid to workers. The Sindh government has released Rs175m while the HW&SC has made recovery of three months as well. “But we are told that only salary for the month of July will be paid and pending salaries will not be disbursed,” said Lashari.

Corporation’s officers form body to get issues resolved

Recently appointed HW&SC Chief Operation Officer (COO) Dr Tanweer Hussain has resigned only last month. Hussain had joined the HW&SC from Mehran University of Engineering and Technology Jamshoro, but he couldn’t get along with this civic agency and resigned, citing personal reasons. His resignation has been accepted by the corporation’s BoD i.e., Hyderabad Mayor Kashif Ali Shoro. His resignation would become effective from Aug 31.

Incumbent CEO Tufail Abro, an officer of Sindh government’s Planning & Development Board (P&DB), had opted for the post when it was advertised. Soon after assuming the charge, he also decided to resign, but then he was persuaded by a ruling party leader from Hyderabad to stay on. Still, he was struggling to put things on right track but his friends claimed that he was not getting cooperation from his subordinates.

The Sindh government wants the HW&SC to be a self-sustaining body but the corporation was unable to deliver even after having been upgraded through this structural reform. The provincial government was now paying water and sewerage charges of its departments directly to the corporation after deducting them at source.

CEO’s view and Rs1.38bn dues

CEO Tufail Abro told Dawn that he has paid salary for the month of May and June 2024 to the employees and now he plans to disburse salary for the month of July 2025 as he has taken over the charge early this year.

He pointed out that the HW&SC was to be given Rs350m out of which the finance department has released Rs175m and another identical amount was to be released from the department soon. He said that past one year’s liabilities of Rs1.38bn were still pending and if that amount was paid then situation would improve because the HW&SC had sacked around 300 ghost employees, which had lessened financial burden on the corporation substantially.

Officers form committee

At a meeting on Tuesday, HW&SC officers formed a ‘Joint Officers Action Committee’ by shunning their differences relating to service and promotions, to highlight their issues and propose solutions.

The meeting was attended by Zeeshan Malik, Mirza Mohammad Ali Baig, Shoukat Shaikh, Asghar Khowaja, Sehwan Kumar, Imran Khan, Masha Allah Rajput, Zia ur Rehan, Ashraf Magsi, Kashif Arain and Amir Rajput.

According to the committee members, formation of the body has been communicated to the deputy commissioner of Hyderabad, HW&SC chief executive officer and its board of directors.

The meeting, attended by all engineers of the HW&SC, discussed the prevailing situation in the corporation as well as challenges faced by engineers in managing the sites.

The meeting also deliberated upon various suggestions and issues confronting the employees. The participants of the meeting emphasised some measures which they believed were needed for the improvement of the HW&SC and for permanent redressal of the problems faced by the engineers as well as employees.

“We have formed the committee only on Tuesday and we discussed so many issues including sacking of 200 employees in the name of ‘ghost employees’ although they are working,” said a participant after the meeting. He regretted that nobody was listening in the management although justification was given to the administration and it was told that 107 employees were working and remained absent.

However, nobody has taken action on the matter. “These employees’ scrutiny should be conducted because they are present at the sites, but in vain,” he said. He said that some of the employees were being electively reinstated by Human Resource head Naeem Shoro.

“The HW&SC wants the Sindh government to pay salaries to the employees for 2024 instead of paying it from its own account,” he said. The present administration wanted to pay salary for ongoing fiscal year while 2024-25 budget was sent to the government in April this year.

“Even this year’s budget is still under preparation and likely to be passed in September-October period. It was negligence of the administration. Funds for rain emergency are not given,” he said.

Published in Dawn, August 28th, 2025