PESHAWAR: With Peshawar mayor Zubair Ali crossing swords with the local government department over the recent postings and transfers in his organisation, employees of the provincial capital’s metropolitan government on Monday blamed the issue for a delay in the payment of their November salary.

Totaling over 2,000, they even went on a strike after locking offices and announced they would resume work only after the salary was paid.

The United Municipal Workers Union of the metropolitan government had given the call for strike.

The employees alleged that Peshawar mayor Zubair Ali had refused to sign their pay bill as he was unhappy over the posting of some senior officials by the provincial government to the metropolitan government without his consent.

Blame non-payment of salary on ‘tussle’ between LG dept, mayor over reshuffle

The local government department recently reshuffled several officials of Peshawar’s metropolitan government, including director-general, director (east), director (finance), director (administration and human resource), director (terminals) and director (estate).

The sources claimed that the reshuffle didn’t sit well with the mayor, who even “resisted it a lot” insisting that those postings and transfers were made on the “affiliation” of the relevant officials with Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf-Parliamentarians chairman and former chief minister Pervez Khattak.

Union president Malik Mohammad Naveed Awan told Dawn that the mayor had refused to deal with official matters forwarded to him by the director-general over the latter’s posting without the former’s consultation.

He added that the mayor also didn’t sign and process the file for the payment of salary to the employees of the metropolitan government.

“We [union] won’t allow anyone to work until the payment of salary to them is made,” he said.

Mr Awan said that on the first day of the strike, no work took place in offices of the metropolitan government as they’re locked by the employees.

He said that another union of the municipal workers led by Qaiser Bacha tried in vain to “force” the protesting employees to resume work.

The union president alleged that some employees fired gunshots in the air to “sabotage the peaceful strike.”

When contacted, mayor Zubair Ali said that every government required teamwork for the smooth processing of official matters to benefit the people.

He added that the team’s leader and members dispensed their respective work through mutual coordination and consultation.

“In principle, the provincial government should have consulted me before reshuffling my team,” he told Dawn.

The mayor wondered how the local government system would function if officials working under him were not on “good terms” with him.

He insisted that the provincial government had transferred senior DG at the metropolitan government and posted a junior official in his place.

Regarding the non-payment of salary to the employees, Mr Ali said the new DG had resumed the charge of his office on Thursday, so there was only one working day i.e. Friday to complete the file work for the release of salary with the signature of the new DG.

“No one can withhold the salary of our employees. It will be released soon,” he said.

The mayor alleged that his “political opponents” didn’t want the metropolitan government to function smoothly and deliver services to the people despite the availability of limited resources, so they’re “bent on posting their own men” to his team.

He rejected the employees’ corruption allegation against him and insisted that since the installation of the metropolitan government around two years ago, the provincial government hadn’t released any development funds to his government.

Mr Ali added that no development work was carried out by his government due to the unavailability of funds.

“How can I embezzle funds, which are not available to me?”

LG secretary Daud Khan was not available for comments on the metropolitan government reshuffle controversy.

Published in Dawn, December 5th, 2023