The municipality here on Sunday began paying the salaries of 234 employees in the dengue fever eradication campaign three months after the workers were first employed. Jeddah municipality said that it would pay the delayed salaries over a period of three days and in addition that it would sign contracts with the employees who have been spraying pesticides to eradicate mosquitoes since the November floods that devastated parts of the city. “We have divided the dengue fever employees into three groups in order to pay their delayed salaries in three days, and we will sign official contracts with some of them in the next few days as we promised when they started working with the municipality,” Sameer Hussain, head of the municipality's human resources department, said. Hussain added that the only reason for not paying the salaries on time was the municipality's emphasis on following official procedures and the fact that a lot of money had been spent on repairing the damage done by the floods. The dengue fever workers had gathered two weeks ago in front of the main municipality building to protest the non-payment of their salary for three consecutive months. Most of the workers in the dengue eradication program are freelancers some of whom have graduated from either high school or university and have yet to find a job. The municipality's dengue fever program aims to increase the community's awareness about the disease and to spray pesticides in the city, especially in the large pools of stagnant water that were created as a result of the recent heavy rains and floods.
