Coming budget to ensure timely payments of salaries, pensions to municipal employees: Ghani

The upcoming Sindh budget for the financial year 2024–25 will have special fiscal provisions to ensure timely disbursal of salaries and pensions to the serving and retired employees of municipal agencies across the province.

Sindh Local Government Minister Saeed Ghani said this on Friday while chairing a meeting at the office of Local Government Additional Chief Secretary Syed Khalid Hyder Shah.

Ghani said the Octroi Zila Tax (OZT) share of the union councils and town committees in the province would also be increased keeping in view the rise in recurring expenses of these municipal agencies.

He asked all the regional directors of the local government departments to compile data as soon as possible and send the provincial authorities the lists of the serving and retired employees of the union councils and town committees drawing salaries and pensions in their respective jurisdictions.

The same data, he said, would be used to make provisions in the next provincial government budget for the protection of the salaries and pensions of the municipal staffers in Sindh.

The regional directors who attended the meeting briefed Ghani on the OZT share being given to the union committees and town committees and the recurring expenses of these agencies.

The local government minister said the provincial government should get updated data about the number of serving and retired municipal employees and complete details of the expenditures of the union committees and town committees.

He said the earliest availability of such data would ensure that the upcoming provincial budget had ample fiscal provisions for paying salaries and pensions of the municipal staffers.

He said the Sindh government had the utmost resolve to pay salaries to the bona fide serving and retired staffers of the municipal agencies who had duly performed their duties in a timely manner. He said a comprehensive report in this regard would be presented to the Sindh chief minister in the next 24 hours.

Ghani said the Sindh government had been doing its best to ensure that the municipal agencies in the province should attain financial self-reliance as soon as possible.

He mentioned that the election manifesto of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) stood for devolution of powers to the grassroots level and empowering the municipal agencies.