Political unrest in the country has not only discouraged the foreign investors, but has also cut the sources of revenue of the City District Government Karachi (CDGK), which is now facing difficulties in paying even the monthly salaries of its employees.
According to sources on Friday, City Government for the last few months has not paid salaries to defunct KDA employees in time and thousands of employees are facing serious difficulties to run their kitchen due to the continuous delay in payment of salaries.
Over four thousand employees of defunct KDA are the main sufferers due to financial crisis in CDGK. Some employees of defunct KDA complained that they were facing the problem since the last few months. They alleged that KMC employees on the other hand get their salaries within the first week of every month, which is clearly a discriminatory tactics of the City Government.
The also claimed that the government had managed to pay Rs 320 million in terms of salaries of Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) employees, but could not arrange Rs 60 million in terms of salaries for employees of defunct KDA. They also claimed that the govt has released salaries for the month of December 2008 to its 40 percent KMC employees out of 4,700.
Talking to Business Recorder, Munawar Imam, Executive District Officer (EDO) of Finance department said that due to Rs 420 million decrease in CDGKs fund from January to March 2009, by Sindh Government, the city government was facing problems in terms of releasing the employees salaries. EDO said that due to the said decrease in the city governments fund it was facing lots of problems in term of releasing the monthly salaries and payments to the contractors.
He said as the current financial crisis has hit the domestic and international market, there was also a drastic decline in the income of city government from its commercialisation activities, and it was unlikely to make requisite addition of Rs 13.5 million to pay the salaries of its employees. He said there was almost zero revenue from privatisation of different roads, which once was a big source of income for the City Government.
"Currently, in compliance with the directives of City Nazim, I have transferred the remaining amount to the health department, as it was facing shortage of medicine for different hospitals of the metropolis," he added. However, the EDO said that within a week the remaining employees of CDGK would be paid their salaries as the matter has been discussed with the City Nazim.