KARACHI, Aug 15: City Nazim Syed Mustafa Kamal has issued order for termination from service of 187 malaria coolies and supervisors for their involvement in irregularities and absence from duty.

Addressing malaria coolies at Civic Centre auditorium on Tuesday, he warned other officials and staff of the health department that they would be sacked if shown negligence in performing duties and declared that those employees who worked with honesty and dedication would get exceptional incentives and double salary as reward.

The nazim had summoned all coolies and supervisors of city government health department at Civic Centre for their physical verification, which was conducted by the nazim himself.

Only 400 staff were physically present, although, according to the city government budget document, 650 out of total 850 malaria staff had received their monthly salary for July.

Mr Kamal while conducting physical verification of the malaria supervisors asked them as to what role they had played during the recent monsoon rains. Some of the supervisors could not give satisfactory answer, which infuriated the nazim. This was the first time after inception of city government that malaria coolies were physically verified which created panic among them. It may be recalled that the city nazim had earlier suspended DDO of the department, Hasan Siddiqui.

He said everybody who was drawing salary from the city government would face accountability irrespective of how powerful he was.

Holding high officials of health department responsible for the poor performance, he directed the malaria staff to remain on roads wearing city government jackets. He said he had decided to conduct physical verification of all the city government department staff.

He said they would be responsible for deaths occurring because of health problems. He said if they had performed their duties, many lives would have been saved. From now on, he directed that all employees of the department would come on duty at 9am and warned that absentees would be spared from their job.

Mustafa Kamal directed EDO Health to submit details of duty of all the personnel in his office by 10am and he would personally visit the areas as per the list to see their performance.

DCO Fazlur Rehman, KWSB MD Brig Iftikhar Haider, EDOs Sarfaraz Ali Shah, Saleh Faruqi and Dr Khalid Sheikh, DO HRM Masood Alam and other officials were also present.

Earlier addressing a big gathering at Gulshan-i-Jinnah organised in connection with the Independence Day, Mustafa Kamal said that the people would see visible positive changes on the occasion of Aug 14 next year.

“Today we have started marching towards the right direction”, he said. However, he added that the government could not give good service to each individual without proper planning and in this regard stressed on social responsibility and public involvement as well.

Mustafa Kamal pointed out that job opportunities were emerging because for the first time foreign investment had started pouring in.—PPI/APP