Mayor Karachi Wasim Akhtar said on Tuesday that fire brigade employees have been paid Rs19.4 million as fire risk allowance and requested Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah to provide Karachi Metropolitan Corporation required funds for increasing 15 per cent salaries of KMC employees and officers.
Addressing finance department officers, Akhtar said that fire fighters are our heroes who try to save lives and properties of the people by putting their own lives at stake.
"Giving allowance to fire fighters is on our priority list, and we would be paying them whenever we have sufficient funds," he said. Akhtar said that KMC revenue had been decreased even more during the lockdown adding to the miseries of the institution.
"The funds we get from the Sindh government are not enough to pay salaries and pensions of 13,000 current and retired employees," he said, adding that he had written many letters to the provincial government but to no avail.
Akhtar directed the finance department to make budget for 2020-21 in which they must cut the non-developmental budget as much as they can so that the money thus saved could be spent on the uplift of Karachi. Responding to a news item that the Sindh government was unlikely to give Karachi new development schemes in the upcoming budget, the mayor said this shows "Karachi enmity" of the Pakistan People's Party.
He said that Karachi was the largest city and the economic hub of Pakistan that contributed a major chunk not only to the economy of Sindh but to the country's economy as well.
The people of Karachi paid more taxes than any other city, but in return it neither got any development schemes nor were its institutions given due funds.
"Local bodies in Sindh are already powerless, and now the provincial government is making it clear that it has nothing to do with Karachi by not giving any uplift scheme to the city," the mayor said.
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