ISLAMABAD – Days after police in Islamabad fired tear gas on protesting government employees, Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed on Sunday made light of the incident, saying it was “necessary to test the tear gas as it had been unused for a long time”.

Addressing a ceremony in Rawalpindi, he said that the capital’s police “fired a little tear gas”, adding that it was necessary to test it since the tear gas canisters had been unused for a long time.

“Only a little was tested, not a lot,” he claimed.

Last week, Islamabad police had fired over a 1,000 tear gas shells at the protesters to disperse them. The protesters, who were government employees, were demanding an increase in their salaries in accordance with the prevailing inflation.

Protesting under the umbrella of All Government Employees Grand Alliance, the public servants had announced a sit-in at Pakistan Secretariat till their salaries were increased.

Security personnel and protesters had clashed throughout Wednesday in the capital’s heavily guarded Red Zone. However, the protest had ended the next day after a government committee succeeded in negotiations with the protesters, agreeing to increase the basic pay of federal government employees from grades 1 to 19 by 25 per cent.

Rashid, who was part of the government committee, said today that the “real problem” was not the tear gas shelling but the pay raise that “amounts to billions of rupees in this time of inflation [and is a burden on the] treasury”.