ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Sunday rejected reports of financial difficulties faced by its foreign missions, the Pakistani foreign office said.
The statement came a day after English-language newspaper The News reported that the Pakistani embassy in Washington had run out of funds to pay salaries for at least four months to some of its employees.
At least five of the Pakistani embassy’s locally recruited contractual employees faced delays and non-payment of their monthly wages from August 2021, the paper reported citing unnamed sources.
One staffer out of the five affected, who had been working for the past ten years with the embassy, resigned in September owing to delays and non-payment, according to the report. It noted these unpaid local staffers were hired by the embassy on an annual contractual basis and worked for the mission on bare-minimum salaries, ranging from $2,000 to $2,500 a month.
“This deliberate disinformation attempt is outrightly rejected. All Pakistan missions continue to be provided the requisite resources for effective functioning in accordance with relevant financial and budgetary rules and regulations,” a spokesperson for the Pakistani foreign office said in a statement.
The spokesperson described these social media posts and related news reports as “entirely baseless, irresponsible and malafide.”
