Final warning given to unvaccinated Sindh govt employees: report
June 07, 2021
- Sindh has made it mandatory for government employees to get vaccinated.
- CM Murad Ali Shah directs finance dept to stop salaries of employees who refuse to get coronavirus jab.
- In the Sindh Secretariat, more than 30% employees have not gotten themselves vaccinated.
KARACHI: The Sindh government has issued a final warning to its subordinate departments to get their employees inoculated in three days or their monthly salaries will be stopped.
According to a The News report published Monday, the government has also started making lists and the employees have been asked to submit their vaccination cards with the relevant authorities.
According to sources, not even half of the 400,000 civil servants have gotten COVID-19 jabs. In the Sindh Secretariat, more than 30% employees have not been vaccinated.
On Thursday, the Sindh government had said that its employees who refused to be vaccinated against COVID-19 would not be paid from next month.
Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah had announced the decision after meeting with health officials to discuss the first cases of the delta variant detected in the province.
"Any government employee who is not vaccinated should have their salary stopped from July," he had tweeted, adding that orders had been given to the finance ministry.
The third wave of infections has started to stabilise in the country after weeks of restrictions on public gatherings, but Sindh has reported the highest number of cases since the pandemic began.
Pakistan’s initially sluggish vaccination rollout has been ramped up in recent weeks with more than 200,000 doses administered most days.
But the impoverished country has fully vaccinated only around 2.2 million people -- a fraction of its 220 million population.
Pakistan has recorded more than 933,000 infections and 21,323 deaths, but with limited testing and a ramshackle healthcare sector, many fear the true extent of the disease is much worse.
Last week, it opened up jabs -- the majority of which have come from its neighbour China -- to all adults above the age of 18.
