HYDERABAD: Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan’s members of Sindh Assembly and other leaders have accused Pakistan Peoples Party of discriminating against Hyderabad while expressing apprehension that contractual employees of Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (HMC) are likely to face the axe as their salaries have been stopped.

MPAs Nadeem Siddiqui and Rashid Khilji, along with MQM-P’s zonal office-bearers Rashid Khan, Umar Alwari, Javed Jabbar, Iftikhar Kaimkhani and others, said that stoppage of the salary might be the first step towards retrenchment of the contractual employees, who had been working in HMC for a long time.

They said that outgoing administrator of Hyderabad Farooq Khan, who belonged to MQM-P, had held departmental promotion committee (DPC) for these employees but the incumbent mayor had blocked implementation of its proceedings.

They said that regular as well as contractual employees and officers, who had come from other councils and inducted in HMC, should be repatriated to their original councils.

They alleged that there was record corruption in HMC’s different sections including land, health, electric, workshop, fire brigade, tax department, anti encroachment, works and services etc and demanded an end to this corruption.

They accused an officer of Sindh local government’s audit department of having become an ‘uncrowned king’ of corruption. “This officer is demanding 35pc to 40pc cut for clearing bills of salaries and other liabilities,” they said.

They said that not all officers and employees, who were appointed to newly-created vacancies in towns and the city were residents of Hyderabad. It was in spite of the directive of Supreme Court that locals should be appointed to all posts from BS-1 to BS-5, they said.

They feared assets and plots owned by HMC would be sold off at throwaway price and vowed that the party would resist the likely move. They said they were going to bring this injustice to

the notice of federal and Sindh government functionaries with request to pay attention to the serious issues. MQM-P would take legal course to stop the illegal practices, they said.

Hyderabad Mayor Kashif Shoro has, meanwhile, said that he had heard about MQM-P’s press conference and was verifying facts about the issue of contractual employees.

He said he was told that the contracts of sanitation workers were not renewed after their services were handed over to the Sindh Solid Waste Management Board.

About induction of employees and officers from other councils, the mayor said that officers were transferred by the provincial government but he would look into the issue as well.

Published in Dawn, July 22th, 2023