KOHAT, June 4: Infighting between officers and lower staff of the tehsil municipal administration over unpaid wages worsened after union leaders issued an ultimatum, saying they would go for a lockout, suspend Islamabad’s water supply and march on to the capital if their demands were not met by Monday noon.

On Friday, members of the junior staff had scuffled with senior TMA officers and both sides registered cases against each other in the city police station.

The police arrested a grade BPS-18 and a BPS-16 officer from the administration and a retired inspector, Raad Wali.

Engineer Qutub Mahsud was released on Friday night while the bail of a sanitation officer was confirmed on Saturday. Raad Wali, who attacked the officers, still in lock-up.

The union president, Mr Suhail at a hurriedly called meeting on Saturday, announced to set up a hunger strike camp, shut down tube wells, lock up all the offices and suspend sanitation work and march on to Islamabad on Tuesday if their four-monthsalary was not cleared by Monday.

The deadline was given after the tehsil nazim and the tehsil municipal officer failed to disburse salaries on Saturday as earlier promised.

The union leader warned that they would hold no further negotiations with the nazim and said he (the nazim) had been making false promises for the past two months.

He said that the workers had cooperated after the federal government deducted Rs15 million at source from the Kohat TMA’s funds against electricity bills, adding that they understood that the organisation was facing a financial crisis.

But, they said, they could not understand why their salaries were being delayed after the provincial government had released a financial grant of Rs20 million.

They criticised the incumbent nazim for laying off 156 surplus employees appointed by the previous government and said that the nazim had termed the dismissed workers a burden on the organisation but then himself appointed 200 more to appease members of tehsil and district councils.