‘Purging municipal agencies of ghost employees top priority’

Sindh’s interim local government minister on Monday said that purging the municipal agencies in the province of ghost employees is one of the top priorities of the caretaker administration. Muhammad Mubeen Jumani said this in a meeting with officers of the municipal agencies based in Karachi that he chaired.

Jumani said that during its limited tenure the province’s interim government would do its best to ensure the implementation of biometric verification of the employees of the municipal agencies for the direct payment of salaries to the bank accounts of the bona fide local government staff.

He said the caretaker government has been making efforts so that the system of biometric verification of the municipal staff be extended to the union committees in the city. A centralised monitoring system should be established to ensure that the municipal staff regularly attend to their duties, he added.

He also said the officers of the municipal agencies are under a greater obligation than the elected LG leadership, adding that whether it is the UC or town municipal administration in the city, whose responsibility has been assigned to them, should be run strictly in accordance with the law.

He lamented that almost the entire instalment of regular grants paid by the provincial government to the municipal agencies had been consumed for the payment of salaries to their staff because the local bodies did not have any spare financial resources to be spent on the development of their respective areas.

He urged the officials to ensure that the government’s financial assistance is spent cautiously so that spare financial resources are available to the municipal agencies for the regular payment of pensions to the retired LG staff.

Jumani said the UCs and towns should work together to serve the residents of the city in the best possible manner. Karachi Mayor Murtaza Wahab, who attended the meeting, thanked him for his support for resolving the financial and other issues of the newly formed municipal agencies in the city.