KARACHI, Dec 13: Protesting over the non-payment of salaries, thousands of civic agencies workers staged a demonstration and a sit-in on University Road, suspending traffic on the road for over an hour and demanding immediate payment of their wages on Thursday afternoon.

Labour leaders speaking to the protesters at the Civic Centre and on University Road warned the government that if they were not paid their salaries within 48 hours, they would stage a sit-in first on Sharea Faisal and later at the Chief Minister’s House.

Meanwhile, the KMC finance chief said the civic agency had paid salaries to some low-grade workers, but all of them could not be paid until it received the total amount the Sindh government owed to it.

KMC CBA chief Zulfiqar Shah and KDA Mazdoor Union chief Ashfaq Chishti said on the occasion that over 32,000 employees of the KMC (27,000) and KDA (5,000) had not yet been paid the salaries, some of them for over two months, and more than 19,000 pensioners had also not received their pensions. They said although they were on protest, they had asked their colleague field workers to continue their duties owing to the rain.