KMC education staff stage sit-in at Civic Centre

Karachi
Scores of teaching and non-teaching staff of the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation’s (KMC) education department staged a protest demonstration at the Civic Centre on Friday to demand the payment of their pending salaries of the past three months.
The protesters claimed they had not been paid the past three months despite working for long hours and chanted slogans against the finance officials of the KMC and its senior management officers. University Road remained blocked for quite some time due to the protest to demand the payment of their monthly dues and other incentives.
At the time of the protest an inquiry committee of the KMC had been investigating the authenticity of the appointments of protesters. The committee had been set up on orders of the KMC Administrator Sajjad Hussain Abbasi to trace out the ghost employees in education department which has a strength of about 1,200 staffers. However, the protesters claimed that recruitment letters were genuine while the KMC officials had declared them as fake. The KMC chief had also directed the committee to ensure the release of salaries of employees whose appointments were found to have been genuine during the on-going inquiry, but take strict action against the ‘ghost employees’.
An official of the KMC said the inquiry began last month is about to conclude after which the report will be forwarded to the KMC administrator.
On the other hand, another KMC official claimed that as soon as the KMC Administrator had issued orders to stop salaries to the employees of education department, a delegation had come to visit him.
The official said a protest had also been organised and the administrator was then advised to launch an inquiry into the matter so the genuine employees can get their dues and ghost staffers were weeded out.
He said that so far, of the 1,200 employees, the records of 300 had been found to be full of irregularities. He said the “supporters” of these employees within the KMC had egged on the workers to protest to put the administration under pressure.