LARKANA: As many as 168 pension and Leave Preparatory to Retirement (LPR) cases are pending payment for over five months at the District Accounts Officer (DAO) Larkana.

 

In this connection this scribe visited the office of DAO on Friday and was told that 90 cases of pension and 78 cases of LPR are pending payment for which the Accountant General, Sindh, has directed them in a recent letter addressed to all the DAOs in the province “not to make payment of Commutation/Gratuity till 30th June, 2021 and only regular pension (self/Family) will be paid through regular payroll”.

 

The DAO has also written a letter to the AG informing him that retired government servants of almost all provincial government departments are pressing very hard to release their pension benefits but owing to the restriction imposed by the AG they are unable to disburse payments which has created a lot of problems for his office. He said fifty million rupees have recently been released for payment to these retired employees but withheld singlehandedly and suddenly causing trouble to the needy aged employees who are facing hardships for no fault of theirs.

 

DAO Zamir Hussain Khokhar said that if the payment is not released by the closing deadline of 14th June then amounts will be disbursed out of the next budget allocations most probably after August. He said at least Rs27 crore are urgently required to clear the backlog of pending cases of low paid and higher scale retired government employees belonging to all Sindh government departments.

 

When Hamza Khan Kalhoro of Government Retired Employees Welfare Association was contacted he said that the Sindh Government is daringly violating the Supreme Court order of giving group insurance amount to its retired employees which has been pending since years. He said all three provinces have paid their employees but Sindh rulers are keeping us on false and fabricated commitments which are strongly condemned.

 

He said it was very surprising and never expected from the rulers of Sindh that they would not even pay commutation and LPR funds on time to its employees who served the departments and gave their blood. He said many employees are also on medication but they cannot afford costly drugs owing to unavailability of money in this massive price hike era. He said most of the low paid retired employees have no homes, their sons and daughters marriages are delayed for want of money but the government has no mercy on them which is cruelty and cannot be tolerated.

 

He demanded of the Sindh Government to provide respite to the needy retired employees by disbursing the payment immediately to save their precious lives along with payment of the group insurance. He also urged the Chief Justice of Sindh High Court to take notice of the issues.