13,000 municipal workers are not doing their job, reveals Ghani

Sindh’s local government minister on Tuesday made a startling disclosure that over 13,000 employees associated with the subsidiary municipal agencies of his LG department have not been carrying out their responsibilities.

Saeed Ghani revealed this while talking to a 31-member delegation of Muzaffarabad’s Kashmir Institute of Management that comprised participants of its mid-management course and the institute’s faculty members.

“We cannot call these 13,000 workers of the LG department ‘ghost employees’, but they are definitely not performing their duties,” the minister told the delegation. “All these workers were recruited in the past on political grounds [but] it won’t be practical for me or for the government to fire these 13,000 employees in one go.”  

Government failures

Ghani conceded that no major water supply project has been developed for Karachi since 2005.

Similarly, he admitted, the government has failed to achieve desirable results in the health, education and other social sectors keeping in view their requirements on the basis of population.

He said the LG system introduced in the country in 2001 was faulty in the sense that there had been no limitation defined for the powers devolved to the local set-up. The powers devolved to the local administrations had no provision for checks and balances, he added.

“That is the reason why later all the provinces either altogether changed that system or made amendments to it in accordance with their respective needs.”

The minister said that after the 18th amendment the LG system is purely a provincial subject, adding that any interference from the federal government into its affairs would be deemed as meddling in the provincial domain.

He said that during the past 10-year rule of the Sindh government of the Pakistan Peoples Party, the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation and all the district municipal corporations had been provided Rs36 billion as their due fiscal share.

Moreover, he added, Rs72 billion was also provided as a grant to help them carry out development works. Responding to a question, Ghani said Karachi is plagued with numerous persisting civic issues because it is a mega city where people from all over the country have come to settle. “First dictatorial rule and then political interference deteriorated the city’s affairs.”  

KDA officers’ record

A day earlier the minister had directed Karachi Development Authority (KDA) chief Samiuddin Siddiqui to submit the complete record of KDA officers of grades 17 to 19 within two days.

During his surprise visits to the KDA and the Malir Development Authority offices at the Civic Centre, Ghani said the officers and employees must reach work on time.

He said that those coming in late would be marked as absent, their salaries would be deducted and departmental action would be taken against them. Siddiqui welcomed the minister and informed him that all the employees were following the punctuality order.