Pakistan: Employees lock offices of Peshawar metropolitan government over non-payment of salaries

The protesters claimed their November salaries were not paid.

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

The protest call was given by  United Municipal Workers Union of the metropolitan government.

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, the newspaper reported.

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), reported Dawn News.

The sources told the Pakistani newspaper 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 News 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.