HYDERABAD: Hyderabad Dev­elop­ment Authority (HDA) workers on Tuesday stopped water supply to consumers in the city from 8am to 4pm in protest, causing a water shortage and other related hardships to citizens.

Led by their collective bargaining agent (CBA), they were protesting against non-payment of salaries, pension and other dues. A call for the agitation was given by CBA president Bahram Khan Chaang on Monday.

He said workers would continue their agitation by stopping water supply to the city from 8am to 4pm on Wednesday as well.

The protesting workers, including those of the HDA’s subsidiary Water and Sanitation Agency (Wasa), held a meeting at Latifabad and Jamshoro water filtration plants and held sit-ins at both places to press the authorities concerned to accept their demands. They vowed to widen the scope of their protest if their demands were not met immediately.

Leading the demonstration at the Jamshoro filtration plant, Mr Chaang along with CBA general secretary Abdul Qayyum Bhatti said that no officers of the HDA, Wasa and district administration bothered to speak to them during the day-long protest on Tuesday.

Expressing workers’ grievances, they said they underwent severe financial problems for want of salaries.

They slammed the Sindh government and departments concerned that were paying no attention to the issues of workers.

The CBA leaders said that various departments of the Sindh government owed over Rs2 billion to Wasa in terms of monthly water, sewerage and service charges bills as Wasa issued bills worth Rs35 million to these departments each month. But the Sindh government was reluctant to pay dues and monthly bills, they added.

They suggested to the HDA and Wasa administration to get those dues and deposit them in the bank for monthly profit over the amount and in the meanwhile, they should ensure receipt of monthly bills regularly so that the issues of salaries and pensions of Wasa employees could be resolved permanently.

“Wasa needs Rs60m to pay salaries and pensions and to run the system each month while it acquires over Rs20m from commercial and domestic consumers in terms of bills. The federal departments do not pay over Rs15m for monthly bills regularly,” Abdul Qayyum Bhatti told Dawn.

Meanwhile, when contacted, Wasa managing director (MD) Masood Juman said that he agreed to the demands of the CBA. He said HDA director general Qazi Shahid Pervez had written to the Sindh chief secretary and local government secretary to ensure those payments, but the Sindh government’s finance department was putting hurdles in the way of payment of salaries, pensions and other dues.

He said he had also given his comments in favour of the CBA.

“Wasa is not begging; this is the right of Wasa in terms of monthly utility bills. But it is sad that they are not being paid so far,” he said, adding that it was very difficult to run the system under these circumstances when Wasa was unable to pay salaries and ensure maintenance of damaged lines properly.

Hyderabad city faced a shortage of water as Wasa already fails to fulfil demands of the city properly in normal days.

“Wasa supplies 60 MGD (million gallons per day) to consumers daily while Hyderabad consumers need 128 MDG. We are trying to expand the system to meet the requirement,” a senior officer of Wasa said.

The CBA has appealed to the Sindh government to pay four-month salaries and pensions to 850 regular employees of Wasa and 560 pensioners; ensure payment of six-month salaries to 1,300 contractual and work-charged employees of Wasa; pay pending general provident fund, gratuity, and commutation of other workers; implement son and deceased quota and to reinstate laid-off workers of HDA’s three units forthwith.

Published in Dawn, February 8th, 2017