You expect the people who keep a city's water running to at least get paid. In Hyderabad, Pakistan, that basic rule of work doesn't apply. Right now, employees of the Hyderabad Water and Sewerage Corporation (HWSC)—the body formerly known as WASA—are living through a nightmare. We aren't just talking about a few weeks of delayed checks. Some workers and pensioners have been waiting for their money for up to 17 months. Think about that. Nearly a year and a half without a paycheck while trying to survive soaring inflation.
The human cost is real, and it's devastating. Recently, Raja Khan Palari, a 64-year-old retired labor leader who spent decades serving the city's water system, passed away. He spent his final four years waiting for his retirement benefits and gratuity. He had liver disease. Because the state withheld his rightful money, he couldn't afford the medical treatment that might have saved his life. The Mehraj Workers Union has raised the alarm that several other bedridden employees are facing the exact same fate. A few months ago, a contract employee took his own life out of pure financial despair. It's a brutal reality that reveals a massive systemic breakdown.
The Disparity in High Official Salaries
What makes this situation truly infuriating is the blatant double standard inside the corporation. While regular staff and elderly pensioners are left penniless, senior officials reportedly managed to clear advance salaries for themselves right before Eid.
The union revealed that contract and work-charge employees received just a single month of backlogged pay before the holiday. Regular employees and retirees got nothing. It shows a severe lack of empathy from management. It's a classic case of administrative mismanagement. The people doing the actual heavy lifting in the summer heat get ignored, while the executives look out for themselves.
A Decades Long Structural Collapse
This isn't a new problem. This rot has been festering for over a decade. If you look back at the history of the Water and Sanitation Agency (WASA) in Hyderabad, workers have had to stage protests 10 to 30 times every single year just to get a fraction of what they're owed.
The routine is predictable and broken. Workers strike, the city's water supply gets threatened, and the administration throws them a two-month token payment to quiet them down. It's a temporary fix that solves nothing. The underlying financial structural deficits are completely ignored.
The organization relies on an unstable mix of low recovery rates from consumer bills and unpredictable provincial subsidies from the Sindh government. When the cash dries up, the laborers pay the price.
- Regular staff and pensioners face up to 17 months of zero income.
- Senior management secures advance payments while field workers starve.
- Grassroots employees lack job security and basic healthcare access.
The Failure of Union Politics
The workers aren't just being failed by the bureaucrats. They're being let down by their own leadership structures too. Activists from groups like Pakistan Trade Union Solidarity have openly called out union leaders for playing along with the administration's games.
Instead of pushing for structural reform or organizing sustained, unified strikes, some union heads accept token gestures. They settle for a couple of months of back pay or get tied up in endless court cases that lead nowhere. It stretches out the crisis. Workers are stuck in a loop of protesting, getting a tiny payout, and falling right back into debt.
What Needs to Change Right Now
The current approach isn't working. If you want to see this crisis actually resolved, the provincial government needs to step in and restructure how the HWSC operates.
First, the Sindh government must audit the corporation's accounts immediately. We need to find out exactly where the funds are going and why executive salaries take priority over field workers.
Second, the system needs a dedicated, ring-fenced fund specifically for salaries and pensions. Worker pay shouldn't depend on whether the corporation had a good month of billing collections.
Finally, the casual contract system needs to end. Hundreds of workers have given 10 to 15 years of their lives to this utility without ever being regularized. They have no safety net. Regularizing these positions gives workers legal protections that make it much harder for bureaucrats to skip their paychecks without consequences. Until these structural changes happen, the people of Hyderabad will keep drinking water paid for by the literal starvation of the people pumping it.
