THATTA, Feb 28: Former contractual officials who had been relieved prematurely by the Chief Minister's Inspection, Inquiry and Implementation Team, said on Wednesday that they had been denied salary for six months and appealed to President Musharraf to order their reinstatement and payment of salary.

The chief minister’s team had contracted some 192 district coordinators, deputy district coordinators and field coordinators to carry out a survey and collect data on the government’s basic health units, primary and elementary schools, water supply and sanitation schemes and ongoing schemes in the irrigation department of the province under a project titled "Community monitoring project for data collection".

Former district coordinator for Thatta Abdul Ghafoor Memon and former district coordinator for Badin Manzoor Mallah told Dawn that the project was funded by Unicef and the team had recruited them through NGOs Indus Resource Centre, Sindh Taraqqi Pasand Mallah Tanzeem and Hands for three years contract starting from January 2006.

They said that the officials after having completed training went about their job punctually and received salaries for the first four months but did not receive any pay after the team’s chairman Farooque Amin who was also project director went abroad and Tariq Saleem took over the charge.

They said that the team initiated correspondence for termination of contract in December 2006 and relieved all the 192 contractual officials of their assignments in the first week of January 2007.