Employees of the Punjab Civil Secretariat and 38 provincial ministries staged a large protest, seeking wage increases comparable to the rest of the country.
Protesters produced a large traffic gridlock in the blazing heat. Residents had difficulty getting to their homes, hospitals, jobs, and places of business.
The district administration and the Punjab government were unable to strike an amicable compromise with the protesting employees to end the sit-in.
It took until the evening for traffic on the city’s main thoroughfares to return to normal. The third day of the strike has gone with no sign of the problems being resolved.
The worst traffic congestion was on Mall Road, Lower Mall, Chauburji, Ferozepur Road, Lohari, Islampura, Sant Nagar, Lake Road, AG Office, Jail Road, Data Sahib, Bhatti Chowk, Bilalganj, Urdu Bazaar Road, Old Anarkali, Jain temple, and other roads.
According to reports, the All Government Employees Alliance was formed to put pressure on the Punjab government to meet their demands.
The federal government increased worker compensation by 35% in the yearly budget, according to protest organizers. Following suit, the provincial governments of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan, and Sindh hiked wages by 30 to 35 percent.
The Punjab government did, however, boost the pay of government employees on the basis of the previous basic salary.
Chaudhry Mukhtar Ahmed Gujjar, the chairman of the All Pakistan Clerks Association’s Lahore section, argued that the Punjab government should have boosted public employee salaries and other perks to match those of the federal government.
As a result of the divergence, millions of employees faced financial difficulties. He said that there had been over 100% inflation, but that the salaries of provincial government officials had only been increased by 5% to 7%.
