LAHORE: 448 employees of Tourism Development Corporation Punjab (TDCP) have not been paid due to the lockdown, during which the absence of tourism disrupted the finances of the self-sustainable department, prompting the employees to protest against non-payment of dues in the head office.
TDCP Workers and Staff Union General Secretary Muhammad Adil Saleem wrote a letter to Punjab Chief Minister Usman Buzdar, wherein he stated that the TDCP had been working for the promotion of the country’s tourism industry for the past 33 years.
The general secretary stated that TDCP pays its staff out of the income it generates and no funds are taken from the government, however, under the present circumstances, it is difficult to pay the staff as the tourism industry had been closed. He pleaded that the provincial government should provide Rs150,000,000 for the staff’s salaries.
Sources informed this scribe that despite tall claims, the incumbent government did not pay attention towards promotion of tourism and did not pay heed to the concerns of TDCP either.
They said that TDCP generated its funds through recreational sites, picnic points, sightseeing buses, city tours, resorts and various events, however, ever since the lockdown, the sites have been closed and the government did not pay attention towards the needs of TDCP.
On the condition of anonymity, an employee of TDCP told this scribe that although the government made plans for the betterment of the organisation, they were never materialised. He lamented that that despite government’s tall claims, it appears that TDCP and tourism is not a priority of the government.
He also said that there are 448 employees in the organisation and out of these 250 are contractual and daily wagers, whereas the rest are regular employees. None of them have been paid for the past two months, he added.
TDCP Managing Director Tanveer Jabbar told Pakistan Today that they have asked the government to provide some funds to the organisation so they can pay their employees. “We have given one-month salary to the staff and are trying to give them the remaining salary before Eid,” he added.
