HYDERABAD: As many as 207 daily wage earners — associated with the Hyderabad Municipal Corporation as sanitation workers, most of them for almost 18 years — have been retrenched with a single stroke of pen.
According to the municipal commissioner, they had become redundant.
The action has come in the wake of the outsourcing of the city’s garbage-lifting job to the Sindh Solid Waste Management Board (SSWMB).
The HMC believed their recruitment had been made ‘with mala fide intention’, without jurisdiction and justification, and by ignoring merit. Thus their services have been terminated with immediate effect to avoid losses to the public exchequer”.
The daily wage earners’ hiring period used to be extended for 89 days every time on the expiry of the previous period.
Hyderabad Mayor Kashif Shoro endorsed the HMC claim that they had become redundant ever since the SSWMB had been established in the city and the garbage lifting job outsourced to it. They have been paid three months’ salaries (May-July) but they have not been rehired by the HMC, the mayor told Dawn over phone.
The retrenchment order was issued on Aug 11 by Municipal Commissioner Anees Ahmed Dasti citing a finance department communication dated Sept 9, 2013 stating that “no appointment is [to be] made on contingency without its approval to avoid liabilities and litigation”.
According to the letter, in case of exigency/emergency, services may be hired for a specific work and time against vacant sanctioned posts and availability of funds under object element’s payment for the services rendered.
Mr Dasti said that these workers were appointed on May 17 under contingency; and since the HMC was no longer required to perform sanitation functions after SSWMB operation in March 2023 onwards, their services had not been utilised.
He said fresh appointment of these 207 daily wage employees was no more justifiable after the sanitation functions were handed over to the SSWMB. He argued that such appointments did not meet the criteria of ‘exigency’ and funds were also not available.
Gradual takeover of task
The SSWMB had started its function of waste management on Dec 1, 2022 first in Latifabad taluka and then in Qasimabad on Dec 10, 2022. It started its operation in City taluka on March 10, 2023. The HMC now covers all four talukas — City, Latifabad, Qasimabad and Hyderabad (rural) — but the SSWMB outreach has not yet been extended to the rural taluka.
“In fact, 1,200 employees were hired in HMC in 2007 by then district nazim and eventually the number was reduced to 900 in different periods,” said Mayor Shoro.
He said that now functions of HMC were being transferred to nine towns of HMC along with workers and assets. “So, workers are to be handled by the town concerned now,” he added.
The mayor noted that the outgoing administrator, Fakhir Shakir, had approved the hiring of daily wage workers for a period ending July 2023 in the note-sheet of HMC but he did not mention the date. “That’s why their salaries for the three months were released. In fact, their [89-day] contracts were to be renewed in April, but the same was done in May, ending the contract in July”.
MQM-P alleges bias
Former Muttahida Qaumi Movement MPAs from Hyderabad Rashid Khilji, Nadeem Siddiqui and Nasir Qureshi in their joint statement described the retrenchment as “continuity of biased decisions by the PPP and its Hyderabad mayor”.
It said: “The 207 Muhajir employees have been sacked in continuity of these policies … the mayor should remove his ‘glasses of bias’ and reinstate these employees”.
They said those who raised slogan of roti, kapra aur makan snatched the same from HMC employees.
Rationale behind hiring on daily wage basis
HMC sources said that since vacancies had not been filled in HMC in the recent past, daily wage workers used to be hired to handle different chores. Initially, such employees were hired for 11 months and then the contract period was reduced to 89 days. “Most of these 207 employees had been associated with the corporation since 2005, when Abdul Jabbar Khan [a PPP member of the outgoing Sindh Assembly] was serving as the Latifabad town nazim. Newcomers among them were very few but they all were hired as sanitation workers on a daily wage basis,” said a source privy to the HMC.
Outgoing Municipal Commissioner Fakhir Shakir said that initially the daily wage workers used to be hired for 11 months but, due to legal bar, their contract period was curtailed to 89 days from time to time to meet legal conditions.
He explained that the SSWMB was not supposed to perform ‘minor functions’ like clearing small drains, so these sanitary workers had to be hired regularly by the HMC.
Published in Dawn, August 13th, 2023