NewsSunday, March 04, 2007
Gwadar Port employees appointed by president fired: Sacked workers want to know whyQUETTA: Several employees of the Gwadar Port Authority (GPA) staged a protest demonstration in Gwadar district on Saturday in front of the office of the GPA director general to protest the stoppage of their salary and their termination from service.
According to details, the government had employed as many as 45 local engineers, seamen, drivers and other personnel in the Gwadar Port Authority in November 2004 on contract basis, whose services were later regularised by President Pervez Musharraf during his trip to Gwadar in November last year. However, authorities at the GPA had spurned presidential orders and stopped the salaries of all 45 people, saying that all these men had been fired because their services were no longer required. All of the employees were residents of Balochistan and they shouted slogans against the GPA management during their protest on Saturday. They alleged that the GPA management was discriminating against local Balochs and were trying to fire all of them from their jobs.
“Since the president of Pakistan has regularised all these employees, how can the GPA fire them and stop their salary?” asked Majid Sorhabi, Gwadar Tehsil Nazim who also led the protest rally in front of the office of the GPA Director. Leader of the opposition in Balochistan Assembly, Kachkol Ali Baloch, also reacted strongly and termed the GPA’s move ‘deplorable’ but not ‘unexpected’ as the nationalist forces had been rightly predicting in the past that the government was developing Gwadar to bring outsiders in the port city in order to convert the Baloch majority population into minority.
“We have never opposed the development of Gwadar. However, we have always demanded that the people of Gwadar, Makran and Balochistan should be given the top most priority in provision of jobs,” he told Daily Times, adding that the latest move on the part of the GPA management was the first step towards depriving the local Baloch people of their jobs in their own district. “Efforts are being made to fire all the Baloch workers and replace them with non-locals. We will oppose this move tooth and nail in on the floor of Balochistan assembly,” he said.
The opposition leader also demanded that the president personally look into the matter. Such moves, he said, would add fuel to the fire in a province which is already “suffering from deprivation, alienation and frustration. The local people must be given the first priority in the development projects. Otherwise, the Baloch possess the right to protest.” A local journalist told Daily Times that there was also a heated argument among the fired workers and Muzaffar Ali Shah, the Director General of Gwadar Port Authority, on Saturday. No one from the Gwadar Port Authority or the Balochistan Government was available for comment, despite repeated attempts by Daily Times. malik siraj akbar
Courtesy DailyTimes.com.pk