KARACHI: Over 10,000 employees and retired workers of the civic agencies belonging to the Hindu minority community could not celebrate their annual festival of colour, Holi, as they did not get their advance salaries/pensions, Dawn has learnt.

The sources said that while the salaries for February had not yet been paid, so to ask for and expect the advance salaries for religious festivals, as had been agreed upon between the workers and the management, was a far-fetched dream.

There are around 10,000 Hindu workers and pensioners associated with the civic agencies — Karachi Metropolitan Corporation, and district municipal corporations — and their total salaries are around Rs125 million and pensions are around Rs95m.

They said that this was not the first time that the workers/pensioners had not received their salaries/pensions in time for their festivals, as in the past also they celebrated their festivals without being paid in time.

Responding to Dawn queries, KMC spokesperson Ali Hassan Sajid said that the civic agency had not yet received funds from the Sindh government so the payments could not be made to the workers.

He said that the KMC workers had not yet (till Saturday, March 3, 2018) received their salaries for the month of February, which he hoped would be paid in the next few days.

Responding to Dawn queries, the civic agencies trade union leader and KMC Sajjan Union chief Zulfiqar Shah condemning the management and the Sindh government on their lethargic attitude for not paying the salaries/pensions to the workers in time said that he had communicated to all the officials concerned in the KMC and DMCs a couple of weeks ago asking them to make arrangements so that Hindu workers could be paid by Feb 26, to be in time to celebrate Holi. But despite this the payment was not done.

He said that while workers had not yet been paid their salaries, the pensioners gradually started to get their pension dues one day after Holi, which was also of no use as the festival had already passed.

He said that Muslim workers also got their salaries/pensions just one day before Eidul Azha last year, which was also of no use as it was difficult to get sacrificial animals on the last day, when the prices had already skyrocketed.

Mr Shah said that now he feared that similar treatment would be given to the Christian community workers and pensioners as their religious festival, Easter, would be celebrated on April 1. He advised the authorities that they had around four weeks’ time so they should make arrangements for the timely payment of salaries/pensions to the Christian community workers and pensioners so that they could properly celebrate their festival.

He said that in Punjab a mechanism had been devised and civic agency workers were given salaries, etc, in time, but unfortunately such effective mechanism had not yet been developed in Sindh.

He said that he along with union leaders, including Master Shankar, Natha Lal, and others visited the Hindu workers’ families, who are presently settled in B&R Workshop to express solidarity and celebrate the festival with them.

Published in Dawn, March 4th, 2018