WASA employees stage ‘sit-in’ against non-payment of salaries

Rawalpindi:The Water and Sanitation Agency (WASA) employees (regular, contractual and work charge) on Monday staged a ‘sit-in’ against the non-payment of their salaries. The protesting employees locked their offices and chanted slogans against ‘corrupt officers’ they were looting WASA both hands.

Majority of WASA officers ran away to see the protesters protesting against them. The residents of Rawalpindi were also deprived of drinking water due to stoppage of all works in WASA. All employees including tube well operators, wall men, tanker drivers, sub-engineers and several others left their official work and demanded to pay them salaries otherwise they will not start working.

The work charge and contractual employees said that they had not been paid for over two months and that WASA officials kept promising to address their concerns but failed to do so. The regular employees also deprived of their salaries of one month.

The workers demanded the immediate payment of their salaries besides an increase in fringe benefits. They vowed to continue their protest till their demands were met.

The Water and Sanitation Agency (WASA) Workers Union President Sohail Qureshi told ‘The News’ that hundreds of employees were deprived of their salaries. The big bosses were not paying salaries of work charge workers, contractual workers and even regular employees. “How we could survive without salary,” he denounced. He also said that first time in history we were facing this bad situation. “Where the funds were going while WASA increased water tariff of over 400 per cent,” he surprised.

The angry protestors raising slogans against Managing Director WASA Muhammad Tanvir, Assistant Director Sadoon Basra, Sub-Engineer Ahmed Hussain and several other corrupt officers and demanded to start investigation against them that why they were not paying salaries. The protesters also alleged that WASA officers were demanding 6 per cent commission ‘bribe’ from contractors to pass their pending bills otherwise not. The angry protestors also raised slogans against Punjab government and Commissioner Rawalpindi Division they were not considering the issues of poor employees. The employees have appealed higher authority to save WASA from ‘corrupt mafia’ otherwise this important department will collapse anytime.

It is worth mentioning here that WASA contractors have stopped all kinds of development works due to non-payment. WASA has increased over 400 per cent water tariff in category wise and also increased their revenue.

The department has also terminated over 300 work charge employees. Over 80 per cent locals were still deprived of drinking water. Despite of all these things, WASA was not able even to pay the salaries of employees why, it was a big question mark on the poor performance of WASA. But, bosses were taking a deep slumber and continuously showing their performance only on papers.